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" The justest laws are the truest." — Epictetus. 

" Civil liberty is the not being restrained by any law, but 
which conduces in a greater degree to the public welfare." — 
Paley. 

" Good and stable government is simply or nearly impossible, 
unless the fundamentals of political science be known hy the 
bulk of the people." — Hobbes. 



THE MORALITY 



OF 



Prohibitory Liquor Laws. 



^.n..|500a2. 



BY y 

1^ 



WILLIAM B. WEEDEN. 




BOSTON: 

ROBERTS BROTHERS. 
1875. 




H V 5 o ^ c^ 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by 

ROBERTS BROTHERS, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



Cambridge ; 
Press of John Wilson &= Son. 



PREFACE. 



'T^HE matter of these pages was suggested in 
a paper read to the Unitarian National 
Conference at Saratoga. A prominent politician, 
a sincere and eminent advocate of prohibition, 
said to the writer directly, " This is an old 
story of yours ; it is worn threadbare." Inas- 
much as several able members of that capable 
association, men versed in the literature of law 
and social science, had said that the argument, 
whatever its merits, was novel and original, 
the remark of the politician set the writer into 
a train of thinking. The able men knew more 
of the philosophy of law, but the politician 
represented more people. It is perhaps this 
stolid indifference among persons holding high 
public trusts to the causes, the underlying 
principles, and the results of their own action, 
which has led the writer to develop his theme 
and bring it before the whole public. The 



6 PREFACE. 

subject is so important in all its bearings, that 
any sincere study of it can do no harm, and must 
be welcomed by all thoughtful persons. 

The writer believes that the whole fabric of 
our legal and political action has been strained 
and injured by the institution and administra- 
tion of these liquor laws. He believes that 
one of the first and most important steps in the 
much talked about reform of civil government 
must be, to turn the humane temperance im- 
pulse away from its abnormal action in law and 
in the state, and to give it natural play in the 
ethical improvement of the individual man and 
of society. If these pages contain any facts, or 
show any reasons which may help to forward 
this issue, his labor has not been in vain. 

W. B. W. 

Providence, K.I., January, 1875. 



CONTENTS. 



Page 

Introductory 9 

Temperance and Abstinence 31 

The Working of Prohibition 56 

The Grounds of Prohibition 99 

Prohibition and Regulation 121 

Another System 158 

Immoral Law-Making 179 



INTRODUCTOEY. 



'T^HIS is not an argument for or against total 
abstinence. The movement for temperance^ 
reform within the present century has divided 
the American people into three classes : those 
who refuse, those who use, and those who 
abuse liquors ; or, to characterize them in the 
briefest terms, abstinents, temperates, and in- 
temperates. The distinction between absti- 
nence and temperance is pure matter of fact, 
which the words embody in themselves. Tem- 
perance and intemperance in the use of liquors 
are as old as the vine itself. Americans, with 
their natural love of association and organized 
action, formed societies rather more than fifty 
years ago to withstand intemperance. ^ 

"As soon as several of the inhabitants of the 
United States have taken up an opinion or a feeling 
1* 



10 INTRO D UCTOR K 

which they wish to promote in the world, they look 
out for mutual assistance ; and as soon as they have 
found each other out, they combine. From that 
moment they are no longer isolated men, but a 
power seen from afar, whose actions serve for an 
example, and whose language is listened to. The 
first time I heard in the United States that a hun- 
dred thousand men had bound themselves publicly 
to abstain from spirituous liquors, it appeared to me 
more like a joke than a serious engagement; and I 
did not at once perceive why these temperate citi- 
zens could not content themselves with drinking 
water by their own firesides. I at last understood 
that these hundred thousand Americans, alarmed by 
the progress of drunkenness around them, had made 
up their minds to patronize temperance. They 
acted just in the same way as a man of high rank 
who should dress very plainly, in order to inspire 
the humbler orders with a contempt of luxury." — 
Democracy in America, By De Tocqueville. Bow- 
en's Trans. Vol. ii. 133. 

This power of association is natural and 
healthful in our country. As the reform pro- 
gressed, the term " temperance," together with 
the idea of temperance, as it is applied to all 
other appetites, fell into abeyance. Total ab- 



INTRODUCTORY. 11 

'stinence and teetotalism became the watch- 
words of the reformers. 

This distinction between temperance and 
abstinence is now well ingrained in mature 
individnals. The writer accepts this social fact 
as he finds it, and proposes no direct argu- 
ment on this issue. He would not touch it 
indirectly, if the main question did not some- 
times demand it. The enthusiasm of the 
abstinents, in its personal and legitimate ex- 
pression, is not to be trifled with, nor even 
argued with. It is a noble passion, ever ele- 
vating, though semetimes narrowing the man, 
and is entitled to respect and affectionate re- 
gard from all of us. The man or woman 
who deliberately abandons liquors is generally 
moved from the depths of the soul. Those 
who have suffered, not in themselves, but in 
the wasted lives of their friends, cherish a 
passion for abstinence, which is beyond and 
above criticism. We say again, that we honor 
this emotion as one of the grand forces of 
humanity. 



12 INTRODUCTORY. 

The moral influence of abstinents should 
likewise have the fullest play. The personal 
power of one who refuses an indulgence is the 
strongest motive to influence the self-indul- 
gent. Society should favor this power of the 
individual by every means possible. 

It is the civic attitude — using this term in 
the lack of a better — of the abstinents which 
the writer would call into the discussion. We 
would ask all abstinents to consider carefully 
their bearing toward society in its forms of law 
and civil government. 

By as much as we exalt and dignify the moral 
power of the abstinents, by so much do we 
dread its waste or misuse in the struggle to 
maintain laws faulty in conception, impossible in 
execution. We do not expect to convince the 
old teetotal war-horses, who started in youth 
determined to force law into total abstinence. 
These men, made morbid by their horror of 
drink and by years of contest with reckless rum- 
sellers, have lost the sense of justice which keeps 
freedom alive. An old mechanic, whose thumb 



INTRO D UCTOR Y. 13 

is made callous by long use of his tool, no longer 
guides it by the quick and supple sense which 
controlled it in his youth ; he moves it by an 
old instinct ; so these teetotalers, blunted in 
the struggle, fail to find tyranny in any law 
against rum, or moral perversion in any legal 
wrong which aims at right. A younger genera- 
tion is coming forward, who see the fearful 
strain upon law which our national life-struggle 
and our material prosperity have brought upon 
us. We would ask of them to consider from 
their own point of view their attitude toward 
law, — not any particular statute, but those 
great principles of government which hold so- 
ciety together. 

The civic attitude of the abstinents may be 
briefly stated thus. Liquor is a poison : always 
dangerous, it is positively bad for healthy 
people. To use it is to incur a fearful risk for 
ourselves, to injure others, to injure the state ; 
let us stop the use of it. We are aware that not 
all abstinents claim that liquor is a poison, but 
tliis is the attitude of the party as a whole. Soci- 



14 INTRODUCTORY. 

ety in mass never would say outright that liquor 
was a poison, and was always bad. Its course 
was curiously inconsistent. Thirty to forty 
years ago New England was greatly shaken by 
the total abstinence movement. The imagina- 
tion of the people was powerfully moved, and 
their moral sense was quickened into new ac- 
tion. Public sentiment was so strong that absti- 
nence became common and temperance almost 
universal in the villages. In cities the current 
was in the same direction, though less decided, 
and the intemperate drinkers became few. The 
reformers then cherished the hope that a new 
generation, educated under the abstinence prin- 
ciple, would further strengthen public senti- 
ment ; that the use of liquors would almost or 
quite cease among decent people ; and that the 
whole moral force of the better disposed ele- 
ments of society would restrain the few who 
could not control their passions, or the intem- 
perates. 

This was too slow a process for the more 
ardent of the abstinents. They determined to 



INTRODUCTORY. 15 

turn the force already acquired into a new chan- 
nel, and to bring the whole power of society, 
through the administration of law, to bear on 
the use of liquors. This system culminated in 
the Maine Law, so called, which, in its various 
forms of prohibition and execution by state con- 
stabularies, has dragged its way through legis- 
latures and courts for more than twenty years. 

How were these laws made, and how ad-' 
ministered ? The abstinents in New England, 
where these laws have developed most strongly, 
were never a majority.^ The main body of the 

1 We seldom realize how small a number of voters actu- 
ally believe in prohibitory law. We cite from the " New York 
Evening Post " : — 

" One of the points in political discussion seems to have been 
pretty well settled by the recent elections ; namely, that the 
people do not approve of sumptuary laws, and that no party 
of any consequence can be organized upon the policy of prohib- 
iting instead of regulating the sale of intoxicating liquors. We 
have not yet the full returns of the vote in this State, but from 
the indications we judge that the prohibitory vote amounted 
to only a few thousands, although tlie prohibitory candidate 
for governor, Mr. Myron H. Clark, was formerly an influential 
politician and once held the governor's office. In Massachu- 
setts Mr. Talbot was defeated, although the rest of the Kepub- 
lican State ticket received substantial majorities of the popular 
vote, because he is an uncompromising prohibitionist, and 
would have stood in the way of modifying the present prohib- 



16 INTRODUCTORY. 

people were temperates, and we mean to include 
in this class every one who uses and does not 
abuse liquors, whether by the teaspoonf ul or by 
the glass. After the first excitement of the 
Washingtonian reform was over, the moderate 
men would not admit in fact that the use of 
liquors was always bad. They would not even 
submit to strict medical rule. In conduct each 
man should be his own physician, and prescribe 
when the little for the stomach's sake was nec- 
essary. This was a freeman's privilege, and 
they would keep it. We are not speaking of 
social drinkers nor tippling convalescents, but 
of the great body of sober, discreet citizens, who 
were neither abstinents nor intemperates. Their 
votes have decided all the prohibitory issues. 
These men seemed to move in a sort of intellect- 
ual stupor, brought on by the moral enthusiasm 
of the abstinents and their own contemplation 

itory law. In Ohio, with the aid of the women's temperance 
crusade, the prohibitory vote was less than ten thousand. And, 
last and least of the instances we now recall, in Illinois, where 
the total vote for State officers was more than three hundred 
thousand, the highest vote for a candidate of the proliibition- 
ists was 1,446, or less than half of one per cent." 



INTRODUCTORY. 17 

of tlie horrors of intemperance. Any thing to 
stop traffic in the accursed stuff, the abstinents 
cried out. Law after law was enacted in differ- 
ent States ; the temperates bhndly voting what- 
ever was wanted. Lawyers shook their heads, 
and physicians doubted, but the current moved 
on. Possibly the legal outlet afforded a rehef 
from the excitement of the moral impulse under 
which the community labored. To put one 
moral reform under control of government and 
get it out of the daily duty of the individual, 
seemed a gain to some short-sighted persons. 
Nevertheless, steady-minded people could not 
vote it a poison. The statutes were all arranged 
with contrivances to allow the use under one 
and another sort of fiction. The contrivances 
and evasions passed into ordinary customs, while 
the statutes were constantly growing more strin- 
gent technically. 

The abstinents, in their civic attitude, as we 
term it, took nearly the same ground which 
of old the church held in its administration of 
theology through its relation with the state. It 



18 INTRODUCTORY. 

was evil to hold a wrong opinion in theology, a 
heresy; it injured the holder, it injured his 
neighbor, injured the state. It seemed good to 
authority in the olden time to restrain, imprison, 
even to kill the heretic. Modern liberty would 
say, the bad opinion, the heresy, will work itself 
out sooner if let alone by authority. We are 
aware some abstinents would say they mean to 
restrain the individual not in his own rights of 
liberty, but in his power to injure others, when 
they make a prohibitory statute. We hope to 
show farther on, that they must begin by tyr- 
anny over the individual, and we assume that 
position now. No teetotaler ever viewed the 
drunkard or the drinking corruption with greater 
horror than Loyola and Torquemada saw the 
heretic and the sinful results of heresy. To 
them, any use of power any force which we 
call tyranny, was better than the suJfferance of 
wrong belief, which would carry souls to hell. 
It is only latel}^ that civil government has aban- 
doned that control over the opinions of the in- 
dividual. The principle was not confined to 



INTRODUCTORY. 19 

any form of government ; it belonged to human 
society, and dwelt alike in theocracy, papacy, 
and constitutionally-established church. Our 
puritan fathers did their full share of this sort 
of legal compulsion for moral ends. The right 
to drink or not drink liquors is an individual 
right, just as much as eating is individual, though 
the whole population should hover between dys- 
pepsy and apoplexy. 

However unwise the abstinents might be as 
citizens, they were at least consistent with their 
own moral purpose and intention toward the 
state. If every one had thought just as they 
thought, a statute of prohibition might have 
been maintained. If a very large majority had 
sincerely held the abstinent view, and had 
effectively abstained from any use of liquors, 
the law could have been administered as well as 
other laws on which the whole community agree. 
The law against killing, for example, is not per- 
fect ; but it is maintained, and even the classes 
restrained would hardly think of repealing it. 

There was no majority either for abstinence 



20 INTRODUCTORY, 

or for abusing drink. There were small mi- 
norities at either end of the moral and social 
scale ; these classes knew their own mind. 
The abstinents said, in the old Mosaic spirit, 
" Thou shalt not drink," ^ and enforced the pre- 
cept by their own example. The intemperates 
said, " Drink, we will." Either of these classes, 
generally speaking, cared more for their own will 
in this question than for any other issue of 
politics. It was a political motive to them, 
because the consciousness of each individual 
was so much excited in opposite directions : one 
toward drink, the other toward abstinence. 
The question never came to a square issue as 
other political topics have done in our history. 
Between the two minorities was an overwhelm- 
ing majority of temperates. This majority made 
the main bulk of the political parties, — Whig, 
Anti-slavery, Democrat, or Republican. The 

1 There is no essential reason why the word "drink" or 
"drinking habits" should be referred to alcoholic liquors 
rather than to other liquids. This use is so well estabUslied, 
and will save so much circumlocution, that the writer will 
accept it, though it is vulgar. 



INTRODUCTORY. 21 

compact body of abstinence voters brought a 
terrible pressure to bear on this great mass of 
citizens always moving at half-tide on the moral 
question of temperance or abstinence. These 
temperates had political motives strong in them- 
selves and in their kind. The Whig desired his 
measures, the Democrat wanted his, the Repub- 
lican would prohibit slavery, the Conservative 
would save the Union, and all were working 
through that common machinery of parties and 
political agitation which must always work out 
pohtico-moral issues. Between these vari- 
ous and fiery political passions, the earnest ab- 
stinents played about, log-rolling hither and 
thither. When there was no state-movement 
there wouldbe small " pipe-laying "in the towns ; 
combinations with a fraction of either party for 
or against an individual candidate ; voting tick- 
ets split in such a manner as to refract a shade 
of one partisan against a bit of the shadow of 
another aspirant, until the political vision of a 
plain man was shaken into all the colors of the 
kaleidoscope. 



22 INTRODUCTORY. 

It is not too much to say that for a generation 
every decent politician, clear-headed enough to 
see the results of politics, has lived in mortal 
fear of '' temperance " and liquor-dealing pol- 
icy. Any disinterested party leader will say, 
as numbers have told the writer, that politics 
were corrupted and dragged into the mire by 
these COD ten ding agitators. It is well for mor- 
alists to remember, that while we cry out for 
statesmen, and censure mere politicians, it is by 
politicians only that state movements are worked 
out. Statesmen are rare in any country and 
any time, and they reach the citizen and voter 
only by the help of politicians. If Abraham 
Lincoln had not been an adroit politician, as 
well as a far-seeing statesman, he never would 
have led the American people through a strug- 
gle as great in its moral issues as it was in its 
political results. 

Abstinents could not see this principle, — 
would not see it : they were intent on a great 
moral purpose. What mattered a little more or 
little less corruption, where all was corrupt? 



INTRODUCTORY. ^16 

Your transcendental moralist, breathing the 
eternal ether of goodness, sees no practical dif- 
ference between gold alloyed with silver and 
gold alloyed with lead ; they are all one in the 
market where all metals are as dross. The 
fierce abstinent said to the temperate, Whatever 
you claim for your own individual right, do you 
believe the state has a right to make drunkards, 
to make paupers and criminals, to license in- 
iquity ? It was decent to answer. No. Politically 
stupid as it was, legally illogical and dogmatic 
as it was, it became respectable for the average 
voter to answer, No. '' Then vote prohibition," 
the men who were in earnest said, and as ear- 
nestness always carries force, they had their 
way. The men who should have known better 
had then' minds filled by other and natural 
political interests, so they never actually grap- 
pled with this legislative liquor agitation as 
its importance demanded. Besides, there were 
many motives combining to bewilder the tem- 
perance voter. If he did not like the political 
issue offered by the abstinent, he liked still less 



24 INTRODUCTORY. 

to be classed with the liquor-dealing, liquor- 
guzzling interest. If not quite harmonizing 
with the one, he could not, consistently with his 
own average action, go with the other. Then, 
as mentioned above, there was a sort of bewil- 
dered laissez-faire morality in putting the dread- 
ful question away from the individual. To 
consolidate the lazy, half-hearted emotion which 
was excited by the appeals of abstinents and 
abstaining inebriates into some sort of law, 
which the state should be responsible for, and 
which society might possibly work out, was to 
get rid of an ugly question within. 

Thus statute after statute was invented or 
evolved ; broken, tinkered, and refitted ; dam- 
aged, whetted, and repaired, through a sicken- 
ing cycle of political history. 

No one changed his habits by reason of his 
vote for a liquor law. There was no moral 
responsibility for the rank and file in voting at 
the polls. A voted for Jones because he was 
" sound on the goose," and Jones was commit- 
ted to a small caucus of abstinence managers. 



INTRODUCTORY. 25 

B voted for Jones because it was respectable, 
and our church generally supported him. Thus 
Jones, and more Joneses, big and little, went 
up to the legislature, politically drugged ; sense- 
less under an anaesthetic worse than opium or 
brandy. To corrupt a citizen is bad enough ; 
to corrupt a legislature is to spoil the chief 
source of citizens, — the laws under which they 
develop. 

There was no strict moral accountability in it 
all. Neither A nor B changed his habits be- 
cause he had voted for Jones, nor did Jones 
change his. Each ordered his case of wine or 
bought his bottle of whiskey just as coolly as if 
he had not stood for the principle of absolute 
prohibition at the polls. ' If the laws meant any 
thing, if there was any thing under the prohibi- 
tion talk, the meaning was that the traffic should 
be stopped. Perhaps the voter went to his 
apothecary's and certified to a constructive lie, 
that he wanted a bottle of liquor " for medici- 
nal or mechanical use," and piously thanked 
heaven he was not like the vagabond seller or 



26 INTRODUCTORY. 

drinker, who broke the law at the corner. Yet 
A and B knew, Jones knew ; Jones knew that 
A and B knew when they voted that, they never 
meant to execute the statute as they enforced 
the laws against stealing. Suppose Jones had 
been caught breaking a bank vault, after legislat- 
ing on robbery, would any sane voter think of 
sending him to make laws again ? 

It is this befogging of the political intellect, 
this stupefaction of the moral consciousness by 
drugging it with political impossibility ; it is 
these things that the writer would ask candid 
and thoughtful persons to consider. We hold 
that the abstinents, inspired by a noble and 
passionate emotion, capable of enormous moral 
influence, have prostituted it in chasing an ignis 
fatuus through the mire of politics. We hold 
that the temperates, halting in their opinions, 
inconstant in moral purpose, bewildered in po- 
litical sense, have vainly tried to impose a des- 
potism upon citizens equal before the law. We 
lay down the following propositions; — 



INTRODUCTORY. 27 

I. Temperance and abstinence in regard to 
liquors are not similar nor convertible terms. 
They represent two distinct principles of living, 
however the}^ may be named. These two prin- 
ciples should be equal before the law of the 
state. 

II. The true province of legislation lies in 
the abuse of liquors, or in the abnse of the 
drinker. The use of liquors belongs to the 
individual, and lies beyond legislation. 

III. Prohibition is based on the theory that 
all use of liquors, except for medicinal, mechani- 
cal, chemical, or artistic purposes, is wrong. 
This theory cannot be established either by 
science 1 or in the facts of the living of the 
people. A law so badly conceived cannot be 
executed. 

lY. Prohibition refuses to recognize the natu- 
ral laws, stated above in L, and it has failed. 
The statutes are not executed in any fair sense, 
or as other penal laws are executed. 

1 See Appendix. We have not exhausted a topic which 
would require a volume ; but the reader will find ample proofs 
of this position, drawn from unquestioned scientific authorities. 



28 INTRODUCTORY. 

V. Laws ill grounded and ill executed cause 
the worst immorality in the state. 

The writer would gladly have treated the 
subject in the order of the foregoing analysis. 
To his mind, the reasons which obtain against 
prohibition are inherent, growing out of the 
nature of the system itself. But long experi- 
ence has established the truth, that the most 
effective mode of discussion is to state the facts, 
then the theories and expositions which those 
facts suggest. 

We shall, therefore, state the principles of 
temperance and abstinence which issue in the 
theories of license and prohibition; and give 
some of the most essential facts of prohibitory 
legislation as they have occurred. 

We will then review the claims of prohibi- 
tion from the stand-point of those who made 
and sustain the laws ; and afterward consider 
the principles of prohibition and regulation from 
our own point of view. 

We shall then detail a better system, or one 
which, in our opinion, has a fair chance of suc- 
cess. 



INTRODUCTORY. 29 

Lastly, we shall examine the whole matter of 
this legislation in the light of the harm it has 
done, or from the ground of that morality 
which is the basis of all law. 



TEMPERANCE AND ABSTINENCE. 



'T^HE writer has been publicly censured for 
his use of the word " temperance " as dis- 
tinguished from '' abstinence." ^ The dispute 
shows that the ideas embodied in the words are 
ill-defined and not clearly established in the 
minds of many who use them. We believe that 
the moral state, or, as our French friends would 
say, the morale of society, will be bettered when 
all interested settle and define their own mean- 
ing and their own ^actice regarding the use 
of liquors. If society means temperance, let 
it say so ; if it means abstinence, let it say so ; 
nothing is to be gained by substituting the one 
idea or word for the other. 

Shakspeare always uses the word in the mean- 
ing of the modern term, '•'- self-control," apply- 



32 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

ing it sometimes to all the passions and again 
to the appetites. 

" What pleasure was he given to?" 

"Rather rejoicing to see another merry than 
merry at any thing which professed to make him 
rejoice; a gentleman of all temperance^ ^ 

Neither does the solid English of King James's 
version of the Bible ever show any confusion of 
these terms. 

"And as he reasoned of righteousness, temperance^ 
and judgment to come, Felix trembled."^ 

"But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, 
long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, 
tem.perance ; against such there is no law."^ 

And from the opposite direction, St. Peter 
indicates his notion of temperance. 

"For the time past of our life may suffice us to 
have wrought the will of the Gentiles, when we 
walked in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine." ^ . . . 

The following citations indicate the drift of 
the word, which, from the control of all the 
passions, was rather limited to the three master- 

i Measure for Measure, iii. 3. ^ Acts, xxiv. 25. 

3 Gal. V. 23. 4 1 Peter, iv. 3. 



\ 



TEMPERANCE AND ABSTINENCE. 33 

ing appetites of the flesh, and gradually was 

applied to the desires of eating and drinldng 

almost entirely : — 

" But when strong passion or "weake fleshlinesse 
Would from the right way seeke to draw him wide, 
He would through temperance and stedfastnesse, 
Teach him the weak to strengthen, and the strong 
suppress." 

Spenser, F«ne Queene, II. c. 4. 

"This blessed company of virtues, in this wise 
assembled, followeth temperance., as a sad and dis- 
creet matron and reverent governess, awaiting dili- 
gently, that in any wise voluptie or concupiscence 
have no pre-eminence in the soul of man." — Sir T. 
Elyot, The Governor. 

"For virtue (quoth Ariston the Chian), which 
concerneth and considereth what we ought either 
to do or not to do, beareth the name of prudence ; 
when it ruleth and ordereth our lust or concupis- 
cence, limiting out a certain measure and lawful 
proportion of time unto pleasures, it is called tem- 
perance.^'' — Holland's Plutarch. 

*' Drink not the third glass, which thou canst not tame, 
When once it is within thee ; but before 
Mayst rule it as thou list." 

Geo. Hekbert : The Church Porch. 

" Temperance permits us to take meat and drink 
not only as physic for hunger and thirst, but also 
2* c 



*> 



34 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

as an innocent cordial and fortifier against the evils 
of life, or even sometimes, reason not refusing that 
liberty, merely as a matter of pleasure." —=- Wollas- 
TON, Religion of Nature. 

*' But knowledge is as food, and needs no less 
Her temperance over appetite, to know 
In measure what the mind may well contain." 

Faradise Lost. 

Addison is discoursing upon eating and drink- 
ing when he says : — 

"It is impossible to lay down any determinate 
rule for temperance^ because what is luxury in one 
may be temj^erance in another."^ 

Hardly any of us would accept Addison for 
a guide in this direction ; but his literary sense 
is always sure and safe. 

Old Elyot defines abstinence so severely, that 
it would deprive our total abstinence friends of 
the virtue of their abnegation while a prohibit- 
ory law is in force. 

^'Abstinence is whereby a man refraineth from 
any thing which he may lawfully take." 

Cowper, in more modern thought, expresses 
1 Spectator, 195. 



TEMPERANCE AND ABSTINENCE. 35 

the plain sense of the word as it prevails in our 
daily use : — 

*' Caird to the temple of impure delight, 
He that abstains, and he alone, does right." 

This is the common sense of Christianity at 
this moment. If a thing is bad in itself, let it 
alone ; if a thing is necessary in reasonable liv- 
ing, then it is not bad. The contrast between 
the two words is sharply drawn by Gibbon in 
his portrait of the philosopher and ascetic em- 
peror, Julian ; — 

" The temperance which adorned the severe man- 
ners of the soldier and philosopher was connected 
with some strict and frivolous rules of religious 
abstinence^ and it was in honor of Pan . . . that 
Jidian, on particular days, denied himself the use 
of some particular food." 

If there is any other use of the words in 
standard writers previous to this century, or 
before the abstinence reform began, the writer 
in diligent search has been unable to find it. 
The two principles are different, and the re- 
formers were wise when they abandoned the 



36 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

great word " temperance," which is general, and 
laid their demands on the limited virtue of 
"abstinence," which is more easily defined and 
capable of stricter enforcement. But having 
changed the basis of the regimen, it is impossi- 
ble to claim both words for the one system. 
Else why was " abstinence " substituted, and 
riveted down by the binding adjective total? 

Abstinence is a sound virtue, but restricted ; 
it is in itself a passion, a strong, narrow motive, 
limited, from the nature of the case. To put 
it into the place of temperance, which controls 
all the passions as well as appetites, is like put- 
ting a shrivelled and ascetic monk into the 
form of the wide-natured Bayard or Sidney. 
These exclusive and dogmatic traits beget a 
certain arrogance in the abstinent party, which 
it behooves all true men to repel, and to force 
back into the region of impertinence, where it 
belongs. 

When the writer read his paper at Sara- 
toga, directed against prohibitory laws, but not 
against temperance or abstinence, on coming 



TEMPERANCE AND ABSTINENCE. 37 

back to the floor of the convention, a person in 
the next seat said to him, " You mean to kick 
up a row, I suppose. You've no principle 
about it." The man was a stranger, and judg- 
ing from appearance, decent enough in the 
ordinary relations of life. There was nothing 
in the character of the essay, and the writer's 
wife assures, him there is nothing in his per- 
sonal make-up, which should lead a stranger to 
suppose that he was an unprincipled man in 
any relation, however mistaken he might be. 
If he had offered a bank-note at the United 
States Hotel, and had argued it was good, even 
though it should finally have been proven to be 
bad, strangers would liardl}^ have thought it 
necessarv to assume that he was utterino- coun- 
terfeit money without principle. This worthy 
stranger had schooled himself into the notion 
that one virtue was all virtue, and that any 
person differing must, in consequence, be a bad 
man, whatever his life might be. That is ex- 
actly what abstinence is not, by any ride of 
philosophy ever invented. It is the result of a 



38 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

powerful feeling, the reaction from one dan- 
gerous appetite ; it is not an Aaron's rod which 
shall swallow up every other power in human 
nature. 

We are not striving to make points against 
abstinence. The writer thoroughly believes 
that good morals will be advanced when wor- 
thy men clarify their ideas and bring their 
principles to the bar of common reason. We, 
who hold to the doctrine of temperance, are 
entitled to decent respect from the abstinents 
in the discussion, and we will have it. The 
burden of proof is not yet removed from the 
abstinents ; they have never yet reformed a so- 
ciety and brought it into such practical accord 
with their system that they can claim that 
system to be the only rule of life, and then 
abuse every person who differs from their 
opinion. 

Much has been accomplished by the total 
abstinence reform in New England; whether 
some similar results could not have been 
brought about by simpler means is matter of 



TEMPERANCE AND ABSTINENCE. 39 

doubt. We do not mean to argue by implica- 
tion against the system ; we only suggest that 
it is not the only method of temperance, and 
should at least be modest until it shows a 
society reasonably reformed, and not held in 
the grip of a tyrannical law, under which it 
writhes and shrinks. Plenty of facts illustrate 
this individual and exceptional character of the 
abstinence system. It has no social force ex- 
cept through tyranny, as we shall prove farther 
on. If abstinence were the best living, then its 
votaries should live by themselves. Accord- 
ingly they tried '' temperance hotels." They 
all failed. If abstinence were the safest living, 
then a life insurance association on that basis 
ought to be the best. The Phoenix Company 
of Hartford attempted to found its business on 
totally abstinent lives. It was ably managed, 
but languished. The same managers changed 
the basis to " temperate " lives, and achieved a 
great success. We can learn of no other ex- 
periment where any company confined itself to 
insuring abstinents. 



40 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW, 

No greater reform than the change made in 
the drinking habits of the upper classes of 
England, has ever been perfected. It is not 
necessary to go back to Fielding, with his 
Squire Westerns and drinking chaplains. Take 
the testimony of one whose life reached over 
into our own time. Lord Brougham is writing 
of the scenes at the funeral of his maternal 
grandfather. These persons were the better 
sort of people in northern England and south- 
ern Scotland. Brougham's mother was the sis- 
ter of the historian Robertson : — 

" The Duke of Norfolk began the toasts at the 
funeral. Many toasts followed. The guests drank 
long and deeply. The funeral then proceeded on 
its way to the parish church . . . the roacl winding 
along the steep banks of the river Eamont. Ar- 
rived at the church, the hearse was met by the 
rector, but the coffin had disappeared. The shock 
was enough to sober the merry mourners. On 
searching back, the coffin was discovered in the 
river, into which it had fallen, pitched down the 
steep bank. . , . The shock and the scandal pro- 
duced by all this had the effect not only of sobering 
everybody, but of putting an end to such disgrace- 



TEMPERANCE AND ABSTINENCE. 41 

ful orgies in the county for the future." — X(/e and 
Times of Lord Brougham., by himself. I. 19. 

An Irish wake and funeral had a similar 
accident in the suburbs of Providence not 
long since, except that they were lucky euough 
to land the dead subject on a hard turnpike 
road, and not at the bottom of a river. 

Take Brougham's own experience when yacht- 
insc amonsr the Western Islands about the be- 
ginning of this century : — 

" Every morning we shoot grouse, hares, snipes, 
and deer, till five o'clock, then eat the most lux- 
urious dinners of game and fish, drinking claret, 
champagne, hermitage, and hock ; at night we are 
uniformly and universally dead (drunk). Your 
humble servant being in the chair {ex officio)., 
does his best, and, having a good capacity enough 
for wine, does odd enough things. Yesterday our 
mess fell off; Campbell and I and two natives set 
into it, and among four had twelve port bottles; 
the natives and Bob being stowed away, I fin- 
ished another bottle and a half of port with an 
old exciseman, major of the volunteers. This 
morning I found all Stornaway in full tongue at 
my astonishing feat; went to the moors, walked 



42 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. - 

it off, and killed a brace of hares at one dis- 
charge. 

(Signed) Hei^ry Brougham." 

Life and Times, I., 85. 

In England, to-day, the nobles, gentry, com- 
mercial, professional, and upper classes gen- 
erally, with the better sort of workingmen, 
are as temperate as any equal number of 
people in any country ; we should ourselves 
think they are more temperate. They use 
liquors socially ; but the abuse is rare. It is 
not decent now for a gentleman to be drunk, 
— and by gentleman we mean a dignified 
man ; a little man or a workingman may be a 
man of dignity ; but one hundred years since, 
as Brougham's letter to his friends at home, 
as well as all literature, shows, it was a very 
respectable thing for a young man to exhibit 
the powers of his body in a struggle with the 
bottle, or such a number of bottles as he was 
equal to. Prohibitory laws have not changed 
these people; nor has the feeling of total ab- 
stinence worked the change in the habits and 



TEMPERANCE AND ABSTINENCE. 43 

tone of the aristocracy. The whole bearing 
of society has changed ; and temperance in 
every appetite has become the practice as well 
as the aspiration of those persons whose social 
position makes them a law unto themselves. 
Compare the sovereigns of the Teutonic 
races two centuries ago with those of this 
time. In this case kings are types of their 
times. New vices have been developed in 
modern times ; but the strength of many 
old ones has been subdued. Material wealth 
and comfort have increased so rapidly, and 
diffused themselves so much, that excess of 
appetite is not now the main desire of man, 
as it often was in a coarser time. To con- 
trol the appetites in every direction, to practise 
a balanced temperance, is the aspiration of 
large classes of society ; and in England it 
has become the practice of those we have 
mentioned. 

Arthur Arnold, in the "Fortnightly," shows 
that England is much more temperate than 
she was a century since : — 



44 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

" We do not, in the reign of Queen Victoria, con- 
sume one-half as much beer as we did in that of 
Queen Anne. The average consumption of malt 
per head of the population was — it will be seen 
from the following table, taken from authentic rec- 
ords — considerably more than twice as great in the 
middle of the eighteenth century as in that of the 
nineteenth. From 1740 to 1790 it was: — 



\ 



1740 . . 3.78 1760 . 
1750 . . 4.85 1770 . 


. 4.29 
. 3.38 


1780 
1790 


. . 3.94 
. . 2.57 


"From 1801 to 1871 it was: — 






1801 . . . 1.20 
1811 . . . 1.60 
1821 . . . 1.38 
1831 . . . 1.63 


1841 
1851 
1861 
1871 


. . . 


1.35 
1.50 
1.61 
1.72 



"John Barleycorn is therefore far less powerful 
in the nineteenth than in the preceding century, — 
and why ? He was partially upset by John China- 
man. I think the fact is indisputable. In the time 
of the Tudors beer was drunk at every meal ; there 
was a steady drinking from breakfast to supper. 
As compared with that time, the draught of malt 
liquor has declined more than one-half, otherwise 
there could not have been the enormous consump- 
tion of tea. The British people now consume very 
nearly four pounds of tea per head per annum, — 
an amount which has steadily progressed while the 
consumption per head of malt has been all but sta- 



TEMPERANCE AND ABSTINENCE. 45 

tionary. This fact is interesting, if only because it 
shows that it is possible, by the introduction of new 
drinks and by legislation, to change the bibulous 
habits of a people." 

We beg our abstinence friends to consider 
the signs of the times. Look at the course 
of New England in regard to social amuse- 
ments. It is not toward severity and asceti- 
cism, but toward liberty and well-regulated use 
of social pleasures. This does not indicate a 
popular mood which will bear too much pres- 
sure from the ascetic side. Least of all, if we 
are in earnest in trying to restrain drunken- 
ness, should the abstinent party repel and 
censure that portion of society which, while 
using liquors, would have strong influence in 
controlling their abuse, if that influence could 
be fairly exerted. 

Many good people choose their course in this 
matter not according to their own wish or con- 
viction, but according to the supposed effect 
that course may produce on others. Persons 
who are not convinced of the wrong in drink- 



46 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

ing, yet avoid it because of the effect their 
example may have on other and weaker ones. 
In so far as this is a genuine affection for ab- 
stinence, it carries some weight and has some 
social influence ; but when it is a mere fashion 
of morals, adopted not for its own excellence 
but for its external effect, it is either useless 
or injurious, as we hope to show. 

There are two kinds of example one nega- 
tive, as when we say with Othello, in his pas- 
sionate condemnation of Cassio, " I'll make 
thee an example ; " or the positive sort, when we 
" propound to ourselves some exemplar saint." 
The abstinent exemplars do not adopt either 
kind. We form ourselves on a good man be- 
cause we admire his virtues, and strive to 
model the same traits in our own character. 
Of course this process, if successful, carries us 
into the essence of the saint, into the secret 
of his being. No one ever created virtue 
from the outside, or by imitating its effects ; 
if he prevails over it, he seizes it in the germ ; 
and having become fired by the same causes 



TEMPERANCE AND ABSTINENCE. 47 

which inspired the saint, he puts forth equal 
effects. This theory of perfunctory example 
attempts to bring people to abstinence, not 
through a serious conviction in those who 
practise it, but through the form and external 
custom which that practice has put on. It 
fails, and it deserves failure. The parsimoni- 
ous, wealthy parent, who limits his own expen- 
diture to make a model for his son's imitation, 
generally comes out with a spendthrift heir. 
In his heart the boy despises the father because 
he is playing a part before him. If the boy is 
not capable in his more ardent and generous 
nature of the same passion for money which the 
parent feels, he cannot cultivate it by imita- 
tion. The real object of the father is ava- 
rice ; the object he represents to the boy is 
prudence and economy. The boy, generally 
speaking, is not capable of avarice, and the 
artificial pressure intended to create prudence 
recoils into extravagance. The theory fails 
and, we say, deserves to fail, for it begins by 
confounding definite and important principles. 



48 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

Ethical truths cannot be divided and twisted, and 
spun into new threads of truth by any expert 
exercise of diplomatic art. Men may get prop- 
erty, or get on in life, according to Mr. Disraeli, 
and states may be governed, by other forces be- 
sides moral ones. This involves other questions 
not properly belonging here. But in moral in- 
fluences we have a new and simple creation in 
every act. The individual takes close hold of 
his neighbor, and there is hand-to-hand work. 
The highest and lowest intelligences are equal 
here. Take up the most ignorant rustic, and 
he knows whether you mean just Avhat the 
words you tell him would indicate. If de- 
ceived by circumstance the first time, he will 
detect you in the second instance. Every man 
is his own mirror, and this revealing of the 
individual is all that can be done in example. 
If you reveal something else, and send forth an 
image which does not proceed from your cen- 
tral and deepest conviction, then you create a 
bad example, though your intention may be 
good apparently. You can sustain but one ideal 



TEMPERANCE AND ABSTINENCE, 49 

at a time, and are fortunate if you haye moral 
energy enough for that. It must be the best 
you have ; and the best you can do for another 
is the very best you can do for yourself. No 
constructive ideal, made from several nicely- 
balanced motives, will affect your neighbor, or, 
if it affects him at all, the effect will be bad. 
Bear in mind this is not hypocrisy, it is not a 
deception of others, but the much more subtle 
deceiving of ourselves. The cynic Rochefou- 
cauld said : " It is as easy to deceive one's self 
without perceiving it, as it is difficult to deceive 
others without their perceiving it." 

If a man looks over his consciousness, and 
finds that he has no fixed principles of absti- 
nence, then, looking to the interests of society, 
he had better practise temperance, and leave 
abstinence to those persons who, believe in it, 
and would die for it, if necessary. That is the 
best example which exhibits whatever he would 
sustain with all his might. In actual fact, a man 
says feebly : " This is not wrong, but I may be 
misunderstood, and it is better for me to deny 

3 D 



50 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

myself than to make others offend." The mis- 
understanding begins with himself, and grows 
larger the farther it extends. The motive be- 
hind the self-denial is not the motive which 
impelled St. Paul, but is the nerveless lack of 
courage which will not let a man work out his 
own convictions. It is this sort of example 
which grinds the individuality out of us. It 
examples the aquiline nose into a Grecian, the 
Roman into a pug, and soon would leave not a 
nose on our socially smooth faces. 

In another view of this subject, example de- 
feats itself. Truth-speaking is a good example, 
but any thing spoken for an example is not the 
truth. Ti'uth is imperial, and compels the in- 
dividual to follow her behest with no reference 
to consequence or the needs of any other indi- 
vidual. In the same manner, good morals are 
impelled by the good sense and wisdom of the 
individual working his whole nature from its 
own centre : else the sense becomes folly, and 
the morals become false and vicious in their 
effects. If we are told, this is hard for the weak 



1 



TEMPERANCE AND ABSTINENCE. 51 

ones who follow examples mechanically, and, by 
exceeding the example of temperance, fall into 
drunkenness, we answer, that we cannot help it. 
Yon cannot aid a fool by taking up folly, or by 
denying an appetite in order to keep him from 
abusing that appetite. If the appetite is un- 
lawful in itself, that is another question, which 
this argument does not include. South says : 
" One thing receives another, not according to 
the full latitude of the object, but according to 
the scanty model of its own capacity." Exces- 
sive drinking, from one point of view, is an 
insanity of the appetite. To treat the appetites 
of all individuals as if they were insane, brings 
on the same confusion that we should have if 
we adapted our common living to the needs of 
persons mentally insane. We should then make 
ourselves crazy, without helping the few insane 
who require a special treatment. 

All this confusion arises from the effort to 
put the test of our moral conduct in the wrong 
I^lace. 

" As a true balance is neither set right by a true 



52 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

one, nor judged by a fjilse one ; so likewise a just 
person has neither to be set right by just persons, nor 
to be judged by unjust ones." — Epictetus (Higgin- 
son's Trans., p. 414). 

Our example is not the main test and stand- 
ard of our lives : it is a mere index, which shows 
what our living is. It must be true, so far 
as it goes ; but the proper interpretation of the 
index is not a social matter for the public ; it is 
an individual matter for ourselves. The test — 
the great plummet and plumb-line of our living 
— is in our interior relation with God ; not 
conscience alone, but all the faculties of which 
cdhscience is the expositor. When this great 
test is straight and satisfied, then example will 
take care of itself, and other persons will receive 
no harm from it. For even if the example be 
one which others ought not to follow, it will be 
thoroughly sincere, and something which carries 
conviction or repulsion with it. Then one with 
the meanest comprehension can follow, or take 
warning and avoid; for he will understand, as 
we instanced in the case of our rustic, who 
knows our truth or falsehood at once. 



TEMPERANCE AND ABSTINENCE. 53 

Physical illustrations never wholly fit, but 
there is a close analogy to the sailing of a ship 
in this conduct of the individual. In steering a 
ship, there are three main elements, — the rud- 
der, the compass, and the course chosen or indi- 
cated. The winds and resisting currents enter 
also, but in this connection we treat them as 
a part of the rudder or steering process. The 
captain compares information, adjusts observa- 
tions, and cultivates good fellowship with other 
vessels ; but he never changes his own course a 
point on account of others. If they need aid, 
he assists, but never links his own craft to one 
water-logged, nor carries more or less sail for 
the benefit of another. The moment he should 
divert his course for the bearing it may have on 
another, he would become a silly man as well as 
a poor navigator. To do otherwise would be 
putting his own compass, or course of sailing, 
as it might be, on board another vessel. The 
individual sails by his conscience, which is the 
best index of right and wrong, and qaickest 
brings the ship to her due bearings. But his 



54 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

course is adjusted through other faculties, as 
we said before, forming a great ocean in the 
soul of mankind, through which from day to 
day the individual works his way. Justice, 
reverence, truth, fortitude, patience, temper- 
ance, and a hundred other moral virtues, enter 
into the course of living, and influence it now 
this way and now that. The man gathers in- 
formation wherever he can, takes his observa- 
tions warily and sincerely, but he must take 
them for himself, and adjust his own course by 
the compass of his conscience and the great test 
of righteous living, which brings him near, and 
keeps him in harmony with God, the Father of 
his soul; When he puts this test, this plummet 
of his own righteousness, into somebody else's 
ship, into an external form of example, then he 
has lost his own positive course in life without 
aiding or changing the course of others. 

It was necessary to make this apparent di- 
gression, for the principle lies near the core of 
our main topic. Temperance or abstinence in 
respect to liquors are principles strictly within 



TEMPERANCE AND ABSTINENCE. 55 

the domain of each, individual. Each man has 
a right — - morally, so long as no law of God is 
broken, which we show in another chapter ; 
socially, as we have proved in the foregoing — 
to choose for himself whether he will use or 
refuse liquors. The abuse of liquors at once 
carries the individual beyond himself, and cre- 
ates the right of social interference. Conse- 
quentl}^, the use or non-use of liquors should 
be equal before the law ; and there is no just 
reason for interfering by legislation or legal pro- 
cess with either practice. 



6Q PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 



THE WORKING OF PROHIBITION. 



^ I ^HE abstinence reformers sincerely believed 
that the law only lacked power ; if they 
could have greater force at their command, then 
they thought they could abolish the trafQc in 
liquors. This feeling was general among them, 
and it was not a new discovery, but a practical 
application of this supposed principle, which 
Neal Dow accomplished in the famous Maine 
Law. This was introduced shortly into other 
States, and became the political shibboleth of 
the abstinence party. It proceeded against the 
property as well as the offender under the law, 
and gave stringent power of seizure. This 
statute was enacted in Rhode Island in 1852, 
and it is interesting to review some of the argu- 
ments which were used in obtaining it, because 
they are the same in kind which prevail with 
the whole party. 



THE WORKING OF PROHIBITION. 57 

Amos C. Barstow led the reformers, and we 
cite from his speech in the Rhode Island House 
of Representatives, as reported in the " Provi- 
dence Journal " : — 

"We are acting on a petition of 25,000 persons, 
of whom 11,500 are adult male citizens ; they em- 
brace a large part of the moral worth of the State. 
. . . These petitions bear the names of the learned 
and excellent President of your University, of 
ministers of religion, of your physicians, merchants. 
. . . They represent the industry and the virtue of 
the State. I beg gentlemen who ^are preparing 
amendments to this bill to mark the prayer of 
these petitions. They want a law to suppress the 
rum traffic, — not to regulate., but to suppress. 
They ask for nothing more, and will be content 
with nothing less. ... I charge Ae evils of intem- 
perance upon this traffic, — and for this reason, the 
appetite is not 7iatwxtl but acquired., and acquired 
through the temptations presented by this traffic. 
The only way, therefore, to stop the demand is to 
cut off the supply. 

" Our present laws do not, and cannot, supj^ress 
it, and for these reasons : — 

" 1st. It requires more evidence to convict a man 
under them«than would be sufficient to hang liim. 

" 2cl. The penalties are inadequate. So true is this, 



58 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

that, ill my opinion, the law is hardly worth enforc- 
ing. It only serves, when enforced, to fret and 
goad the rumseller, while it allows the traffic to go 
on. He can pay its penalties, and grow rich in spite 
of it. 

" 3d. It allows towns to license the traffic. The 
State thus, by giving this liberty, sanctions the 
traffic, and becomes a party to the crime. . . . 

"It is hoped that these (Is., provisions of new 
statute) and other stringent provisions will secure the 
desired end, — will suppress this traffic. The suc- 
cess which has thus far attended the enaction of the 
law in Maine warrants this hope." 

After twenty-two years' experience of this 
statute, during which time it has either slept 
on the statute-book or been enforced in feverish 
spells of energy, we are still hearing the same 
arguments and the same promises, with the 
demand for more power in the law. The only 
new principle introduced into the prohibitory 
statutes of Rhode Island or Massachusetts has 
been in the appointment of a force of state 
constables. These officers, it was claimed, hav- 
ing no local associations, would enforce the law 
more strictly. 



THE WORKING OF PROHIBITION. 59 

The reader will observe the principles which 
run through this argument. The state must 
take control of the appetites of its citizens just 
as a mother directs an infant. Then, these 
appetites are not in the individual, but " ac- 
quired^^ through the agency of the liquor-seller, 
and the state must suppress the traffic in order 
to cut off the appetite. Many promises made 
by the abstinence advocates were even stronger 
than those we have cited, which were tempered 
by the opposition of debate. There was a 
serious conviction among the majority that a 
new era in the temperance reformation had 
arrived, and that well-disposed persons, what- 
ever their private desires, should lend a hand 
to bring in the promised millennium. The '' in- 
dustry and virtue " of the Maine LaAv people 
was tacitly backed by the larger force of 
" world's people," who, though not allowed the 
sanctimonious crown of virtue, yet try to do 
their duty toward their neighbors and the state. 
Every assistance was rendered to the abstinence 
managers after the law was enacted, and many 



60 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

doubtful ones even voted for it, that the princi- 
ple might be tried. Mr. Barstow, the ablest 
executive in the abstinence party, was elected 
major of the city of Providence, and a com- 
plete staff of officers was made out, who should 
in principle sympathize with the statute. The 
" world's people " laid in demijohns of spirits 
and cases of wine, until every other house was 
not only a castle, but a castle supplied against 
a siege. 

The results did not justify the ample prepara- 
tion made for the law. Illicit traffic among the 
lower classes began at once, and defied the best 
exertions of the officers. Clubs were formed 
among well-to-do persons, and the drinking of 
liquors kept on. All who have observed these 
clubbing operations to avoid a law — abstinence 
men as well as temperates — agree that they 
are among the worst evils society ever brought 
in upon itself. We give the testimony of a 
thoroughly disinterested gentleman who is used 
to the observation of facts, and knows how to 
reduce them to a scientific verity. 



THE WORKING OF PROHIBITION. 61 

"Pkovidence, Oct. 21, 1874, 
" Wm. B. Weeden, Esq. : 

"My Dear Sir, — In accordance with your re- 
quest, I send you in writing the substance of the 
statement made by me orally to you a few days ago. 

"During the years 1854-5-6, I was living in one 
of the 2:>rincipal cities of Connecticut, and was very 
favorably situated to observe the workings of the 
'Maine Law,' when first passed and enforced in 
that State. The evils resulting from it were so seri- 
ous, that those of its most ardent supporters who 
were really in a position to see and feel the real 
state of the case were quite willing to allow the law 
— in that city at least — to become aTdead letter. 

" On one occasion, I heard the prosecuting attor- 
ney (who had been very earnest in working to 
secure the passage of the law) state the following 
facts in private conversation : — 

" ' No sooner were the dram-shops closed than the 
regular tipplers, uniting, formed various "clubs" or 
" societies" ostensibly for social or literary j^urposes. 
liooms were hired, fitted up in good style, and stocked 
with an abundance of the " ardent," purchased at 
wholesale prices in New York. The rooms, open at 
all times to members, became their favorite resort at 
night, and gambling soon became a marked feature 
of their festive c^atherinsjs. Not satisfied with fleec- 
ing one another, they soon began to draw in fresh 
victims, — the more innocent the better. Young 



62 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

men, who would have turned with disgust from a 
dram-shop, were easily enticed into a "club-room," 
and those who would never have consented to play 
at cards in a public resort were more ready to join 
in a game, " among friends, you know." The infec- 
tion quietly spread, especially among employes of 
the higher class, — clerks and others holding posi- 
tions of trust, who had been considered above all 
suspicion. At length the employers became aware 
that things were going wrong, and soon discov- 
ered the source of the evil. Urgent appeals were 
made to the prosecuting attorney by many of the 
best citizens — most of whom had been zealous and 
influential friends of the Maine Law — to put an end 
to the pressure which gave these " clubs " their being 
and their vitality. The law soon ceased to be en- 
forced, but its evil effects long survived, as the 
" clubs," once organized, maintained themselves for 
some time. Many a young man, armed at all points 
against open temptations, succumbed to the insidi- 
ous lure of a " secret society," with its promise of a 
social circle of " good fellows." That these " clubs " 
were really the result of the law, and that they owed 
their vitality in great measure to its enforcement, is, 
I think, capable of distinct proof. ' " 

The experience of clubs of this sort has been 
equally bad everywhere, though they have not 



THE WORKING OF PROHIBITION, 63 

all tended so much toward gambling. A disin- 
terested witness, who had an intimate knowledge 
of the habits of the working people in Connec- 
ticut at this time, assured the writer that many 
persons and families bought supplies of whiskey 
from carts which came in the night, who hardly 
drank at all in ordinary seasons. The feehng 
was rife among them that they were cut off 
from a right, and must make it up from the first 
ilhcit opportunity afforded. 

The writer was then a clerk, and often at 
work in different warehouses Avith the wharf 
laborers. When the enforcement of the law was 
most rigid, and a stranger might suppose there 
was not even a dew-drop of whiskey accessible, 
these men would leave their work, one at a 
time, dive into some cavern or burrow, and 
return in five minutes, their lips wet with the 
hasty dram. These men had as little power to 
evade tlie law as any class could have. It is 
fair to infer that others of the same Idnd and 
other classes attained the same privileges else- 
wliere. All external evidence showed that JMr, 



64 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

Barstow's argument should be reversed. Instead 
of the supply of liquor being the cause of an 
appetite, facts indicated that the appetite com- 
manded its supply in spite of all the power the 
city of Providence could bring to suppress it. 

" As they (statesmen) descend from the state to a 
province, from a province to a parish, and from a 
parish to a private house, they go on accelerated in 
their fall. They ought to know the different depart- 
ments of things, — what belongs to laws, and what 
manners alone can regulate. To these, great j)ohti- 
cians may give a leaning, but they cannot give a 
law." — Burke, Y. 210 (Rivingtons). 

The results among the better conditioned peo- 
ple were patent to every one. The abstinence 
administration was turned out as a failure, and 
matters drifted along in the old way. It might 
be expected that the dangerous classes — those 
who are directly amenable to the law, through 
lack of character and settled place in life — 
might be controlled more surely than the 
wealthy, or those humble laborers whom we 
have instanced above. That the system failed 
here also, the testimony of Dr. Wayland shows. 



THE WORKING OF PROHIBITION. ^T:) 

He became an abstinence man, on account of 
the weight his character and public position 
gave to his example. He afterward lent his 
influence to prohibition, in the hope that it 
might prevail ; he was a petitioner for the law, 
as we have seen, though he always doubted its 
final success. The writer is assured of this by 
those who knew him well. 

~ The report of the State Prison Inspectors, 
drawn in the handwriting of Dr. Wayland, — 
he being chairman, — dated Jan. 14, 1853, con- 
tains the following": — 

"It will be seen, from the above statistics, that 
the greater part of the expense to which the State is 
at present subjected in maintaining tlie prison, arises 
from the county jail. If this branch of the prison 
could be made sufficiently productive, the conditiont 
of the establishment would be much more satisfac- 
tory. The reasons why the earnings of the county 
jail are so small are twofold. In the first place, 
those persons who are only detained for trial are 
not subjected to labor, and hence there are no 
means for reducing the expenses of their main- 
tenance ; and, secondly, the sentences to the county 
jail are, iii many cases, so short, that no time is 

£ 



Q6 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

allowed for teaching these convicts any profitable 
labor. 

"The bad effect of these short sentences is not 
confined to its expense of maintenance. It is thus 
rendered impossible to teach the convicts habits of 
industry, or to overcome habits of intemperance; 
and, still more, by returning the same convicts fre- 
quently to prison, there is entailed upon the State 
a large expense in the shape of fees of arrest, com- 
mitment, and trial." (The state had just added a 
wing to the state prison, containing eighty-eight 
cells. The average number of prisoners was then 
one hundred and fifteen, — forty-seven being state 
and sixty-eight jail prisoners.) 

" The Inspectors respectfully request that any 
part of the State Prison may be used as a county 
jail at the pleasure of the Board." — Acts and Re- 
solves. Rhode Island, Jan., 1853, p. 332. 

On the 31st of December, 1855, about three 
and a half years after the Maine Law went into 
operation, the State Prison Inspectors made 
another report, which also bears the name of 
Dr. VYayland. We extract : — 

"By this mode of exercising criminal jurispru- 
dence, no single object is attained; nothing is done 
either to diminish the amount of crime or to im- 



THE WORKING OF PROHIBITION, 67 

prove the individual criminal. The result may 
therefore be set down as nothing. . . . This total 
$6,306.49 is the cost in Providence county for in- 
toxication, which is taken from the pockets of the 
tax-payers. From these statistics it would seem, 
then, that the amount paid by the county of Provi- 
dence alone for imprisonment for intoxication, if 
divided among the several towns of the State, 
would furnish each one with about 8200 for the 
purchase of a library. As at present expended, it 
is impossible to discover that it attains a single val- 
uable result. . . . The last report for the Albany 
Penitentiary has been received. The experience of 
that institution has been in every respect so nearly 
identical with our own, that we beg the attention 
of the Assembly to the following extract : — 

" ' Albany Penitentiary Report. — Since the en- 
actment of what is termed the "Prohibitory Law," a 
new crime, denominated "public intoxication," punish- 
able by ten days' imprisonment, has been instituted, the 
practical effect of which has been detrimental to the 
pecuniary interests of the penitentiary. With the law 
itseK the Inspectors have nothing to do, whatever their 
individual opinion of its merits or demerits may be. . . . 
If our law-makers had intended to punish the tax-paj^er 
instead of the drunkard, or, rather, if they had meant to 
inflict a slight punishment on the latter at the expense 
of the former class, the object could not have been more 
effectually accomplished. Neither is its moral influence 
in any degree salutary. In the opinion of the Inspect- 



68 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW, 

ors, the statute referred to should be so amended as to 
lengthen the term of imprisonment, or things in this 
respect restored to their original state, and offenders 
treated as they were before the law existed.' 

" Impressed with these convictions, the Board of 
Inspectors ask leave to commend the laws relating 
to imprisonment in the jail to the attention of the 
General Assembly, fully convinced that they will, 
in their wisdom, originate such enactments as will 
more effectually and economically accomplish the 
object of criminal jurisprudence," — Acts and Ke- 
solves. Rhode Island Assembly, Jan., 1856. 

A nuisance act was passed in 1856, which 
supplemented the original law, and corrected 
spme of its details which had been damaged 
in the courts. But the practical results, after 
all the legislative tinkering, were no better than 
the old system before the Maine Law began. 
Mr. Barstow's description of the old law — "it 
only serves, when enforced, to fret and goad the 
rumseller while it allows the traffic to go on ; 
he can pay its penalties and grow rich in spite 
of it " — applies equally well to the new or 
Maine Law system. The liquor-dealers in Provi- 
dence have acquired large fortunes, built solid 



THE WORKING OF PROHIBITION. 69 

blocks of stores, and in everj way evinced a 
prosperous traffic. The extra pressure of the 
law has increased their margin of profit. It 
might be said this increased price was an ad- 
vantage to the drinker, in that it checks con- 
sumption ; whicli would be true, were it not that 
the quality of the article sold has deteriorated 
so much from the same cause that the injury 
done the drinker is aggravated in a double ratio. 

The writer is assured, by a competent eye- 
witness, one whose testimony would be weighty 
in any affair, that the result was substantially 
the same ^in Maine. Though the law main- 
tamed itself in administration, yet its fruits 
were not satisfactory. " After the first two 
years the extreme measures disgusted all mod- 
erate temperance men." 

The writer supposed — every one supposes — 
that it would be easy to set forth these facts 
of the working of prohibition and of the hab- 
its of the people in their use of liquors in sat- 
isfactory statistics which should indicate the 
consumption of liquors. Wherever we travel, 



70 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

whether in Maine, Massachusetts, New York, 
or Ohio, we see about the same evidences of 
hquors and their consumption. Bar-rooms, sa- 
loons, and retail shops prevail almost equally. 
In large places, when new streets are opened, 
we see about the same preparation for liquor- 
selling, w^hether the location be in Massachu- 
setts or New York. A village may show signs 
of an especial abstinence from liquors, but the 
next village will give equal evidence of a dif- 
ferent habit, while both live under the same 
prohibitory law. States having different sys- 
tems, wdiether of license or prohibition, show 
no marked difference in their drinking habits. 
Go into their homes, and you find abstinence 
prevailing among the ascetic temperaments, and 
about the same tendency toward drinking in 
different places among those who do not agree 
with the ascetics. It is evident, at a glance, 
that the law prevailing does not essentially ' 
change the habits of the people, though they 
may differ in degree. A notable proof of this 
fact from the negative side is afforded in Vine- 



THE WORKING OF PROHIBITION. 71 

land, New Jersey. Here a large village lias 
grown up under a prohibitory system almost 
absolute. The reason why the system has suc- 
ceeded is because the people are different from 
any common town organized by the usual laws 
of settlement. The place was exceptionally 
conceived, exceptionally settled, and is excep- 
tionally governed. It drew together a group 
of citizens tired of other places and desirous 
of new ways of living. The administration 
which may succeed there, is, in th^ nature of 
the case, unfit for the country at large. There 
could not be a whole country of Vinelands 
unless there were more worlds to select from. 
Whether the whole country would be better 
if it were all Yineland, we are not discussing ; 
it would require at least three generations of 
people exceptionally selected and reared to 
prove the superiority of the exceptional sys- 
tem ; meanwhile, it is an open question. Laws 
are made for the whole people, and not for any 
fragment, whether that exceptional portion be 
better or worse than the majority. 



72 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

Determined to prove these plain facts, the 
writer apphecl to one of the best statisticians 
in Massachusetts, and drew out the following 
reply : — 

"I profess to have the means of getting at sorae 
statistics; but a more preposterous request than 
that you sent to me yesterday I never knew. Dr. 

might tell you to a pint how much liquor was 

used in the State in any given period, but he would 
get at it in the same way the boy said the astron- 
omers ascertained the distance to the sun, — guess 
at half and multiply it by two. 

" Ko, my dear Sir, there is no way you can find 
out any thing of the kind in any trustworthy way. 
Some of the wholesale liquor dealers may have 
approximate statistics which would be useful for 
comparison of one year with another, on the prin- 
ciple that the blunders will balance, but not other- 
wise, — nothing absolute. You might reckon that 
all the liquor that comes into the State is used, as 
there is a prohibitory law in Maine, and no liquor is 
sold or used in that State. 

" Don't be discouraged by my inability to answer 
this question. Try me again. — Sincerely yours." 

The writer then thought a search might be 
made throuofh the records of the common car- 



THE WORKING OF PROHIBITION. 73 

riers, on the great Imes at least, which should 
show the amount of liquors carried into Boston, 
for a term of years, and thus give us on paper 
the relative consumption from season to season. 
Such a statement would be interesting to all 
who discuss this vexed question, whatever their 
view of it. A gentleman much interested in 
these issues, and so situated as to command all 
these sources of information, replied as fol- 
lows : "I have enquired both at the Provi- 
dence offices and at the Boston and Albany, 
to see if any such statistics as you desire are 
accessible ; but I find nothing less than a 
most disproportionate amount of labor and 
research would accomplish even an approxima- 
tion to what you require, and this would be 
open to criticism." We have been thus par- 
ticular in detaiUng this experience, because it 
shows the method by which we have labored 
in this work. There is not a single statement 
made in this whole essay which is not the result 
of conference with persons who know whereof 



T4 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

they speak. The writer has no connection with 
political party or politicians, and no connection 
with the press. This freedom from the powers 
that be, in these regions of sumptuary law, has 
opened the mouths of many officers who could 
not speak in a report, in a political convention, 
or through the medium of the newspaper re- 
porter. Many statements we make guardedly, 
for the purpose of keeping the personality of 
the witnesses secret. We have been received 
in the fullest and freest confidence, and what- 
ever the reader may think of our argument, he 
may rely on the fact that the writer receives 
and gives out no testimony which he would not 
apply in his own affairs or his own family. 

The present prohibitory law in Massachu- 
setts was enacted in 1869. In principle it is 
like all these statutes, and like the original 
Maine Law; they only differ in details. 



THE WORKING OF PROHIBITION. 75 



THE STATE APPOIXTS A COMMISSIOXEE OR STATE 
AGEXT. 

Chap. 415 — Sec. 17.^ "The selectmen of every 
town containing less than 5,000 inhabitants may, 
the mayor and aldermen of every city or selectmen 
of every town containing more than 5,000 inhab- 
itants shall, appoint one or more suitable persons as 
agents of such place to purchase and sell at some 
convenient places therein, spirituous or intoxi- 
cating liquors to be used in the arts, or for 
medicinal, chemical, and mechanical purposes, and 
no other. . . ." 

Sec. 24. "Whoever, purchasing spirituous or 
intoxicating liquor of any agent, intentionally 
makes a false statement reo^arding^ the nse to 
which the liquor is intended to be applied, shall 
pay a fine of not less than five nor more than 
twenty dollars." 

SALES SPECIALLY AUTHORIZED. 

Sec. 27. "The importer of liquor of foreign pro- 
duction may own, possess, keep, or sell the same in 
the original packages, and in quantities not less 
than the quantities in which the laws of the United 
States require such liquors to be imported." 

Sec. 28. " Druggists may sell, for medicinal pur- 

i General Laws of Massachusetts, June, 1869. 



76 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

pos^3s only, pure alcohol to other druggists, apoth- 
ecaries, and physicians. 

Sec. 29. "A chemist, artist, or manufacturer 
may keep for use, not for sale. Any person may 
manufacture or sell wine for sacramental purposes. 
Any person may manufacture or sell cider, not sold 
or kept with intent, at a public bar, to be drank on 
the premises." 

Sec. 32. " Whoever directly or indirectly ^ells 
to another person spirituous or intoxicating liquor, 
or mixed liquor, part of which is spirituous or intox- 
icating, in violation of the provisions of this act, 
shall, for one violation, pay ten dollars and be im- 
prisoned in the house of correction not less than 
twenty nor more than thirty days ; for a second 
violation, shall pay twenty dollars and be impris- 
oned in the house of correction not less than thirty 
nor more than sixty days ; and for any subsequent 
violation shall pay fifty dollars and be imprisoned 
in the house of correction not less than three nor 
more than six months." 

Sec. 35. " In all cases under this act, delivery of 
intoxicating liquor in or from any building or place, 
other than a j^trivate dwelling-house or its depen- 
dencies, or in such dwelling or dependencies, if part 
of the same is a tavern, &c., shall be deemed prima 
facie evidence of and punishable as a sale ; and a 
delivery in or from a private dwelling-house, with 



THE WORKING OF PROHIBITION. 77 

payment implied, shall be deemed priimd facie evi- 
dence of and punishable as a sale." 

Secs. 36, 37, 38, 39. " Whoever owns liquors with 
intent to sell ; whoever receives the same to con- 
vey to another intending to sell ; whoever receives 
for a railroad; whoever brings into the Common- 
wealth, or conveys from place to place within the 
same," all these are fined or imprisoned, and a rail- 
road is to be fined fifty dollars for each offence. 

Sec. 62. "All intoxicating liquors kept for sale, 
and the implements and vessels actually used in 
selling and keeping the same, contrary to the pro- 
visions of this act, are declared to be common 
nuisances." 

Chap. 442 — Sec. 1. "The word * constable,' 
wherever it occurs in Chap. 415, shall be held and 
construed to include within its meaning the con- 
stable of the Commonwealth and his deputies." 

This act was amended eleven times in four 
years, or to 1873 inclusive. As the Chief of 
the Boston Police says: — 

" The law for the suppression of the sale of 
intoxicating drinks is manifold in its provisions, 
including the single sale, the second sale, common 
sale, seizure, and common nuisance clauses, each 
with its respective penalty. . . . The duties im- 
posed on the new organization (^.e., the state 



78 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

constabulary) were of no inconsiderable magni- 
tude ; but it is reasonable to suppose that all officers 
on whom the duty devolved, faithfully carried out 
the policy of the authorities under whom they 
served; certainly a great many prosecutions have 
been made under all the provisions of the law by 
both local and state officers ; hut yet drunkenness, 
the evil, has not diminished.''''^ 

According to the Police Report, in 1872, 
there were in Boston 2,768 places for the sale 
of liquors, or one shop for every 99 inhabitants. 
Providence, which at the same time had a very- 
loose license system, reports one shop for 223 
inhabitants. According to Arnold, London 
had 10,000 " public and beer houses," or one 
to about 300 inhabitants. These figures are all 
approximate, and the most accurate which 
are to be had. They show that the traffic 
which is cut off by prohibition in country- 
towns is recompensed in Boston. "With our 
abundant transportation, this transferred traffic 
is easily carried on. 

1 Report of Chief of Boston Police, 1872, p. 50. The italics 
are ours. 



THE WORKING OF PROHIBITION. 79 

The State Board of Health of Massachusetts 
are equally positive in their conviction that 
the prohibitory law has not practically suc- 
ceeded. We cite : — 

"For years pubhc sentiment in the Common- 
wealth has fluctuated between the extremes of 
action and reaction on this matter. Meanwhile, 
it seems certain that while throughout the State 
there is less drunkenness than formerly, it never 
was more rampant than now in Boston and some 
of the larger cities. This habit the Board believe 
to be infinitely deleterious ' to the prosperity, hap- 
piness, health, and lives of the citizens.' The 
records of our courts, and the knowledge which 
every one has of its effects in the private family, 
assure us of this fact. The evil is enor?nons. How 
to remedy it is the difficulty.-^ 

In the small villages and country towns of 
Massachusetts, as well as Rhode Island, the 
law has proved more effective. Whether this 
success is not superficial and dearly purchased, 
is matter of doubt. When we dam a stream, 
it is not stopped ; the current ceases as w^e 

i Report of the State Board of Health, 1871, p. 11. 



80 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

look upon it, but while the sources remain 
the stream gathers new force, and cuts new 
channels, made even more dangerous by the 
dam we have interposed. 

Laws in this country are born out of the 
life of the people. In the world's history the 
state has never distributed its sovereignty so 
lavishly and freely as our American govern- 
ment has done. The people have great power, 
and their mood takes speedy effect in legisla- 
tion, especially in the state organisms. Sov- 
ereignty is absolute, and knows no moral right 
or wrong after it has once uttered itself in a 
statute. Hence a statute must either be in 
such accord with our common living that it 
works itself out easily, or it will remain a 
dead letter, and be eddied by the popular cur- 
rent passing by it. The people will hardly 
resist it by means of the regular forms of legal 
resistance, for they made it. A prohibitory 
liquor statute carries injustice with it. The 
man seeking to purchase is not a criminal un- 
less he is drunk ; he finds a seller willing to 



THE WORKING OF PROHIBITION. 81 

take the risk of the law, and the seller is 
always supported by the public sentiment of 
that part of the community he knows most 
of. He is tacitly supported by the whole com- 
munity ; for the people who give weight to 
ordinary legal administration — what we term 
the respectable part of society — take, and will 
take, no practical action in liquor prosecutions. 
No man hesitates to inform or testify ao'ainst 
theft or against maltreating brutes, or any 
other crime which common public sentiment 
abhors. A citizen does not like to dabble with 
liquor-selling; tha buyers will hardly testify; 
hence the prosecutors resort to shifty tricks to 
estabhsh their suits. The local officers are but 
the executive arm of their communities ; they 
are men of like passions to those among whom 
they live. If it were an honorable and de- 
sirable pursuit to follow liquor-selling through 
its sinuous devices, they would seize upon the 
honor. As it is, they generally decline the 
opportunity. 

For these reasons, the prohibitionists devised 



82 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

the state constabulary, by means of which the 
odium of executing the law should be removed 
from the provinces of home rule and laid 
upon a central force emanating from the state. 
The pressure brought to bear on these imperial 
officials by the Joneses we have described, and 
the abstinence politicians should be sufficient 
to keep the law in operation. In a measure 
the system has succeeded, for it has brought 
the power of the state to bear more readily 
on the details of government than we have ever 
known in our American experience. Carried 
out, it would destroy town government, the cor- 
ner-stone of our republic. A town not able to 
administer its liquor laws wisely would soon 
fail in other administration. A board of bridge- 
builders, another of road-makers, another of 
almshouse keepers, and another and another, 
all under state control, might conduct their 
first operations more wisely than the citizens 
of a small and remote town might do the 
same ; but, meanwhile, what would become 
of the citizen on whom the town rests? what 



THE WORKING OF PROHIBITION. 83 

of the town on which the state rests ? It 
is the method of imperial Russia, it is the 
method of France, which adapts itself equally 
well to an ephemeral republic or to an empire. 
It needs the virtues of a despotism as well 
as its power to make it tolerable in admin- 
istration. Mingle the powers of a despotism 
with the vices of party politics, and the result 
will not better the state, even though a few 
liquor shops are closed in the process. It is 
matter of common report in Massachusetts that 
practices are instituted under this system which 
should make all good citizens grieve, whether 
they be temperate or abstinent in principle. 

Both Rhode Island and Massachusetts have 
good assay laws, which rest on the statute-book 
with no practical results. The abstinence men 
do not care to stop the sale of adulterated 
liquors as such. The difference between the 
good and the bad is to them, as Mr. Toots 
would saj^, of •' no consequence." Their aim 
is to suppress the whole traffic, and the further 
this impossible goal is removed, the more ardent 



84 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

becomes their pursuit of it. Any practicable 
regulation to cut off present evils moves them to 
tacit opposition, or, at best, to indifference. 

In Rhode Island, the old Maine Law of 1852, 
with its amendments, was allowed to sleep on 
the statute-book, the legislature meanwhile 
granting privileges for local license to the 
towns and cities. In May, 187-1, the General 
Assembly repealed all the license laws, re-estab- 
lished the original seizure powers of the Neal 
Dow law, with even more stringent provisions, 
and appointed a force of state constables. In 
July, with great fanfaronade, the work of pro- 
hibiting the sale of intoxicating drinks began. 
The reader who is not so fortunate as to live 
within the bounds of our little but strong State 
may suppose that this .law was the result of 
some change in the opinions of the people of 
Rhode Island ; some deep conviction which 
gave an impulse to the legislators, and would 
afford power to enforce and maintain it. A 
prohibitory law is not made in that way. There 
was a crisis in Rhode Island politics, worse than 



THE WORKING OF PROHIBITION. 85 

the one which Thackeray so humorously por- 
trays in the affairs of England. A senatorial 
chair was to be vacated, and the aspirants dis- 
puted for the prize. The contest was fierce, with 
many ballotings. Mr. X couldn't, Mr. X 
mustn't, and Mr. Z, the temperance leader, 
wouldn't come in. The astute manasrers for 
one of the candidates thought that by enacting 
a constabulary and prohibitory statute they 
could gain a move over their opponents. Mr. 
Z, the temperance leader, was personally pop- 
ular, and might have drawn sufficient support 
from the other parties to elect him, but he 
wouldn't accept, and in no event could a direct 
prohibitionist be elected on that issue ; the gen- 
eral government and the United States treasury 
have never appreciated prohibition. Therefore 
these calculating gentlemen foresaw a prohib- 
itory measure might help their " slate " : thus it 
was done. It is whispered about that the men 
who actually made this law were not strongly 
convinced in their own persons of the good of 
total abstinence. It is even hinted that these 



86 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

politicians do not hold themselves bound by the 
State law, but remand their allegiance to that 
higher law which sends taxes on whiskey into 
the United States treasury, where they are 
much needed. Besides, those who criticise 
and carp at these patriots forget that there 
is no statute in Rhode Island which forbids a 
legislator or a political manager to drink. The 
prohibition is upon the saZe. 

The agitators set their machinery in motion 
during the summer, and in the autumn a lot of 
cases were under way. It is supposed there 
are^ fiiHy five hundred suits instituted. It is 
evident that, if law and litigation would ac- 
complish the suppression of the traffic, there is 
enough in process in Rhode Island. They made 
loud noise, and one might suppose that no man 
would dare to tap a cask. Still the know^ing 
ones said that the sale was going on in different 
form, but in as large quantity as ever. The 
state constables bustled about and worked faith- 
fully as they could ; there is no question of their 
^ In December, 1874. 



THE WORKING OF PROHIBITION. 87 

integrity. They could not be entirely fair, as 
politics are constituted. Where a dealer had 
strong political influence, — and the shrewd ones 
among them have this, owing to the inverse 
working of these very laws, — the constables 
found it convenient to pass him b}^ But they 
seized many stocks of liquors, and large ones, to 
await trial under the new statute. There is so 
much good done, you will say ; to get any sub- 
stantial quantity of liquors out of the shops is 
a blessing. Innocent ! you do not understand 
the plain ways of liquor laws. As soon as the 
state constable attaches, the dealer puts his legal 
machinery at work. The ownership of these 
large stocks of liquors is in men who live in New 
York. They at once sue, and the United States 
marshal, one greater than the state constable, 
takes possession. Well, tlie liquors are safe, 
good women will say ; some good is done. Not 
at all. The United States assumes no further 
responsibility than it is obliged to, in any civil 
suit, for any property interest. In this suit, it 
only cares for the plaintiff, who wants his liquor, 



88 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

therefore the marshal appoints a keeper who is 
satisfactory to the plaintiff, and if he chooses he 
appoints a clerk of the Rhode Island dealer. The 
marshal has no other com^se open to him ; he 
discharges his duty morally and legall}^ when 
he satisfies the plaintiff. So the liquors have 
rounded the circumlocution office, and passed 
back into the virtual control of the dealer from 
whom they started. The dealer then goes on 
retailing with a small stock at risk of seizure, 
but the bulk of his property is under the virtual 
protection of the United States government. 
The fault is not in any executive, it is in the 
law itself, which starts in injustice and ends in 
absurdity. If you say the same evasion might 
follow any law of regulation, we answer no. 
Any law which does not work out public senti- 
ment will be evaded, if not by the above process, 
by some other equally ingenious. But ingenuity 
never saved a public offender where the public 
were in earnest. The public mind assents to 
the theory of regulation ; enthusiasts attempt to 
turn that sentiment into prohibition ; the result 



THE WORKING OF PROHIBITION. 89 

in practice is a mush which is neither prohibi- 
tory nor regulative. 

All this legal and governmental commotion 
produced a corresponding effect on the public 
mind. The newspapers were filled with noisy 
assertions that liquor-dealing Avas crushed or 
being crushed, and that prohibition was ex- 
alting itself day by day in the estimation of 
the citizens of Rhode Island. This expression 
culminated in the testimony of Gov. Howard, 
who is politically affiliated with the prohibition- 
ists, at a convention of the Rhode Island Tem- 
perance Union. He said : — 

. . . "I stopped short without recommending par- 
ticularly the prohibitory law. I did so because I was 
not fully convinced that it was the best remedy to 
be found ; but the law was adopted. After a long 
time we succeeded in selecting such a force of men 
as was needed to execute those laws; and now, 
ladies and gentlemen, I am here to-night, especially 
for the purpose of saying, not from the stand-point 
of a temperance man, but as a public man with a 
full sense of the responsibility which attaches to me 
from my representative position, that to-day the 
prohibitory laws of this State, if not a complete 



90 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

success, are a success beyond the fondest anticipa- 
tions of any friend of temperance, in my opinion. 
Ladies and gentlemen, prohibitory legislation in 
Rhode Island is a success to a niarvellous extent. 
I have desired, I have felt it incumbent upon me to 
make that declaration, and I desire that it shall go 
abroad as my solemn assertion." ^ 

This was on the eve of the 29th of October. 
" The Union," the organ of the prohibitory- 
party, on the 4th of December, in an article 
entitled " The Future Outlook for Prohibition," 
makes this statement : — 

" What has been done to enforce the law, aside 
from the labors performed by two or three of the 
seven deputies?^ Wtiy? little or nothing at all. 
The dealers in intoxicating liquors have made some 
little changes in their mode of doing business, and 
the business goes forv^ard ]\xs,t as defiantly as though 
it were a virtue to trample the statutes of a little 
State like Rhode Island under foot." 

The piteous whine for the little State was 
gratuitous, . for Massachusetts conflicts in the 
same or similar processes of law with the gen- 

1 Extract from report of speech in " Providence Journal." 

2 i.e.. State constables. Tiie italics are ours. 



THE WORKING OF PROHIBITION. 91 

eral government. The statement of the '' Union " 
was correct, and confirmed by the common ob- 
servation of all except the few whose brains 
and ears were filled with prohibitory prejudice. ^ 
If the law was a dead or dying failure on the 
4th of December, it is obvious that it could not 
have been '* a marvellous success " on the 29th 
of October, only five weeks previous. Gov. 
Howard is an honorable man, more unselfish 

1 Since the above was in type, Mayor Doyle, of Provi- 
dence, has published his annual report, and we cite : — 

" The number of arrests during the past year has been less 
than in the preceding year ; and this fact was to have been 
expected from the depression of business, particularly in the 
manufacturing branches. This result has been observed in 
police experience heretofore. At such times the arrests for 
drunkenness and small offences growing out of the use of in- 
toxicating liquors decrease. The enactment of a prohibitory 
liquor law has not reduced the number of places for the sale of 
liquor in this city. At the present time, the number of places 
where liquor can be obtained is larger than at any time here- 
tofore. It has, however, changed the mode of seUing ; and, in 
many of the places, instead of a variety of liquors being kept 
on hand and in considerable quantity, a single kind and but a 
small quantity is now kept where it can be found. There has 
been considerable increase during the past few months in the 
number of young men upon tlie streets under the influence of 
liquor, and complaints of rowdyism from this class are becom- 
ing very frequent, far more so than we have been accustomed 
to receive." 



92 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LA W. 

than ordinary politicians. The facts prove the 
political principles we stated in our introduc- 
tion. An honest man, deluded by the noise of 
zealots, is driven into a declaration which his 
common sense would never have entertained, 
if he could have allowed that wholesome moni- 
tor to be heard. It is seldom the futility of 
prohibition is proven in such dramatic experi- 
ence, but the principle is the same everywhere. 
Ehode Island is a small community, and inakes 
history promptly, whether in the Dorr rebellion, 
the Union struggle, or in the vagaries of pro- 
hibition. The law works quickly, the reaction 
is speedy, and these facts are thrown out upon 
the surface, so that people mus^ recognize them. 
The statute is the same as elsewhere, a little 
more stringent perhaps, it being the latest con- 
trivance ; the people are much the same in their 
habits with those of other Eastern States. 

The writer has enjoyed the freest confidence 
of the officers of the law in almost every de- 
partment of its administration. He has never 
found one who believed the law has been or 



THE WORKING OF PROHIBITION. 93 

can be executed in> such a way as to sensibly 

lessen the traffic in intoxicating hquors. Many 

interesting facts coming from their sources 

have gathered in the writer's note-book while 

he has been investigating this matter ; he has 

space for but few of them. While the State 

and the United States officers were trying their 

strength over the liquor in the barrel, what 

were the retailers about? To the ej^e, many 

shops were dry ; ^ but on one street there were 

fourteen dwellings which had meanwhile begun 

to retail spirits. Imagine the consequences of 

converting fourteen homes into drinkmg dens, 

— this on one street, — then extend the picture 

over a large city. These were the haunts of the 

poorer classes. At the same time, one man had 

upon his pocket-ring seven keys to as many 

different club-rooms opened for the purpose of 

drinking. The upper classes, as they are called, 

organized these clubs in all quarters of the city ; 

we have already cited evidence showing the 

1 In other cases the sale kept on. There would be three 
different seizures at one shop within two months. Yet the 
daily sale would hardly be diminished. 



94 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

effects of these illicit institutions. The positive 
effect produced by the law was chiefly in cut- 
ting off uses of liquors, which all but extremists 
would agree Avere not harmful. This instance 
occurred, and we give it in the words of one 
of the parties concerned : — 

"A German woman expecting to die desires the 
communion in conformity with the usages of her 
church. She sends for a clergyman, who has no 
wine, in consequence of the prohibitory law. To 
obtain the wine, the clergyman appUed without 
success to a fellow-clergyman, and then, the matter 
being urgent, he addressed a note to a respectable 
druggist, who reluctantly furnishes a small amount 
of vile stuff. Through a mistake, the wine was sent 
to the clergyman's house, who could not conscien- 
tiously convey this stuff to the patient, and destroyed 
it. He applied to a leading druggist, knowing him 
personally, for some pure wine. The druggist most 
reluctantly furnished the article desired, which was 
presently forwarded to the patient. The patient, 
when it arrived, no longer needed the wine, or the 
communion, or the pastor." 

This pathetic story is an exceptional affair, 
but it truly illustrates the cumbrous working of 



THE WORKING OF PROHIBITION. 95 

that legal macliinery whicli, created to catch the 
virtuous and vicious alike, allows the vicious to 
slip through, and ensnares the few people whose 
consciences would need no statute. 

The writer was obliged to send to New York 
at about this time for a jug of cooking wine. 
He could not get it in Providence without 
breaking the law,^ though it was notorious that 
the law was being broken daily. 

The number of persons who are habituall}^ or 
often drunk, in proportion to the whole number 
who drink liquors, is not as large as we generally 
suppose. In the city of Providence, the popula- 
tion of 1873 was, in round numbers, 85,000. 

"During the year 1873, in the total number of 
arrests there were 4,211 different persons, instead of 
5,920 ; there being 1,040 persons previously arrested 
for the same offence during the year from two to 
twenty-three times, and is equal to 1,709 arrests ; the 
number of non-residents arrested was 1,140. By 
deducting these, we have but 3,071 persons arrested 
for drunkenness that were actual residents of this 

1 At that time a few dealers were selling on licenses not ex- 
pired. But they were not of the class with whom the writer is 
wont to deal. Neither the grocer nor apothecary could then 
legally sell a gallon of cooking wine. 



96 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

city, — the number of repeaters being equal to 29 
per cent of the total arrests, and the number of non- 
residents equal to 19 joer cent, — making the num- 
ber of repeaters and non-residents equal to 48 per 
cent of the whole number. The number of repeat- 
ers has gradually decreased during the past four 
years. This may, to a very great extent, be attrib- 
uted to the good influences brought to bear through 
the united labors of the various temperance organi- 
zations in the city and state.^ 

Respecting the non-residents, the report says 
" tbey were employed in laying water-pipes for 
the introduction of Pawtuxet water, in building 
sewers and reservoirs, and in widening streets, 
&c. I think I am safe in saying that eight-tenths 
of this number were men of intemperate habits, 
and a very large proportion of them are classed 
among the repeaters for the last four years." 

If the matter of drinking was confined to these 
unfortunate wards of the police, it might per- 
haps be more easily controlled. But look at the 
facts. In 1872, the police report 22 drug stores 
selling under license, and 358 other places of 
sale, making 380. In 1873, there were about as 

1 Eeport of the Chief of Providence Police, p. 15. 



THE WORKING OF PROHIBITION. 97 

many ; it is not a question of strict prohibi- 
tion ; the new act did not begin until July, 1874. 
These 380 places would furnish a shop for every 
12 of the above-named 4,211 common drunkards. 
Twelve customers would hardly support a shop, 
even if they drank without cessation. Besides, 
no traffic was ever sustained by that class of per- 
sons exclusively. A traffic so extensive as this 
gets a portion of the wages of solid industry, 
or it could never sustain its wide proportions. 

The writer was able to investigate the drink- 
ing habits of a group of 168 adult workingmen. 
It was a picked force, common laborers, with a 
fair proportion of skilled men. Of these, ^% were 
abstinence men, and 100, or about 60 per cent, 
drank alcoholic liquors more or less. None of 
these were habitual drunkards, and very few 
were occasionally intoxicated. These latter 
were most affected by the Sunday drinking, 
which is the worst form of intemperance. 
Hardly any of these men were to be found 
among the arrested, resident or non-resident. 
A man of this class would lose caste among his 

fellows should he be arrested. These are not 
5 Q 



98 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

"statistics," but actual facts, and other groups 
of laborers v/ould doubtless afford similar re- 
sults. The point at issue is not whether it is 
wise or unwise for these men to drink liquors, 
but whether society, as a whole, can absolutely 
prohibit an appetite which fully one-half of the 
respectable laboring people consider reasonable. 
Of the habits of the so-called upper classes, the 
reader can judge for himself. 

It is acknowledged that while the legal meas- 
ures are being pushed, the efforts of the Temples 
of Honor and other voluntary temperance asso- 
ciations in Rhode Island are lessened, and the 
corresponding results are less. These associa- 
tions and all methods of temperance reform need 
a constant supply of personal enthusiasm, and it 
is this vital influence which affects the drunkard 
and forces him to change his habits. Naturally, 
while the prohibitionists are praying to Hercu- 
les, and trying to force the law into impossible 
channels, the enthusiasm which would find a 
legitimate exercise upon individuals is absorbed 
and lost in grinding at the great government 

mm. 



THE GROUNDS OF PROHIBITION. 99 



THE GROUNDS OF PROHIBITION. 



TT may be useful to look toward the grounds 
on which the prohibitionists rest their argu- 
ments, and to consider the subject from their 
point of view. In 1866 and 1867 a strong peti- 
tion was made to the Massachusetts legislature 
for a license law, or for such change in the then 
prohibitory statute as would recognize the sale 
of liquors. This petition was supported by 
Governor Andrew, and a joint special commit- 
tee devoted long sessions to the hearing of tes- 
timony on both sides. Numbers of leading 
citizens, representing almost every vocation, 
were examined by one party or the other. 
ReA'. Dr. A. A. Miuer, a distinguished Univer- 
salist divine, appeared for the Massachusetts 
Temperance Alliance and the remonstrants, or 
the supporters of the prohibitory statute. The 



100 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

remonstrance was strong and weighty, repre- 
senting generally the influence of " the active 
friends of temperance, the tried and true co- 
laborers," using the language of their own re- 
port. The petition failed. 

Dr. Miner's argument ^ lasted three and a 
half hours, and fills a pamphlet of 122 pages. 
As might be supposed, from the gravity of the 
occasion, he gathered all the points relied on by 
prohibitionists, and we shall quote freely from 
his exposition. In one sense the argument, as a 
whole, sujDports our main issue, for it is a total 
abstinence plea addressed to a majority in a 
legislature constituted in the manner we have 
described. As we claim that legislation must 
ground itself on the actual life of the whole 
people, and not on the moral desires of a faction, 
however worthy that desire may be, it is a strong 
collateral proof of our position, that the prohibi- 
tionists must argue teetotally and not generally. 

To get the drift of the argument, we will 

1 Argument on the Eight and Duty of Prohibition. A. A. 
Miner. Boston : Wright & Potter, Printers. 



THE GROUNDS OF PROHIBITION. 101 

state, briefly and clearly as we can, the points 
which he makes, some by proof and some by 
assertion, in the order in which they stand : — 

— The agitation is a liquor-dealer's movement. 

— Teetotalism is the only temjoerance — and bet- 
ter than any use of liquors. 

— A strong array of statistics, showing the ma- 
terial cost and increase of disease by intemperance ; 
also the indirect cost through crime. 

— " Alcohol is classed as a poison."^ This asser- 
tion is nowhere established. There is much contra- 
dictory testimony discussed on respiratory food, 
and especially whether "alcohol is assimilative, that 
it does the office of food by arresting the disintegra- 
tion of tissues." The weight of testimony cited by 
the Doctor bears toward this latter view, but he 
claims the opposite. He keeps to his direct state- 
ment that it is poison, though he does not bring 
sufficient proof ^ 

— The general inutility of alcoholic beverages is 
established through Dr. Carpenter. 

1 Argument, p. 44. 

2 Dr. Miner relies much on the statement of " the elder Dr. 
Bigelow, that if intoxicating beverages had never been dis- 
covered, the well-being of the race would have been promoted." 
The writer respectfully suggests to both the reverend and the 
medical gentlemen, that is one of the mysterious things " no 
feller can find out." 



102 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

— There is less drunkenness in Massachusetts 
than in wine-drinking countries. 

— " There is not the slightest evidence of the 
Scriptures giving any countenance whatever to the 
"use of fermented liquors." -^ " Paul was a total ab- 
stainer, Timothy was a total abstainer." ^ 

— Liquors may be useful as medicines, but not as 
beverages; even if useful as beverages, social ex- 
ample requires abstinence. 

— Disputes Stuart Mill's position, that drinking 
is a right of individual liberty; claiming that the 
social right of restraint is equivalent to right to sup- 
press obscene books, or to restrain truancy, and tax 
for education of the truants. He shows no direct 
argument for the legal right of prohibition, but 
claims the right negatively.^ 

— Answering an argument that the law is not 
executed in Boston, he makes three points : — I. The 
authorities are to blame therefor. II. It is executed. 

1 Argument, p. 66. 

2 Argument, p. 71. 

3 We cite from page 82 : — " Few, if any, witnesses here 
have pointedly denied the right of the government to maintain 
a prohibitory law. Perhaps ex-Governor Clifford is an excep- 
tion to this remark. When asked if such an enactment does 
not transcend tlie legitimate authority of the State, he an- 
swered, ' undoubtedly.' At the same time, he proceeded to 
say that the State has a right to enact laws which, without 
attempting the impossible, shall restrain the sale and use of in- 
toxicating beverages." 



THE GROUNDS OF PROHIBITION. 108 

III. The same amount of non-execution would exist 
under a license law. 

— Public opinion sustains prohibition. 

— That under the state constabulary the traffic 
and drunkenness in Boston both diminished in two 
months. 

— That club-rooms spring up, but they need 
not. 

— Desire for social excitement, claimed as inherent, 
is actually promoted by drinking usages, and is arti- 
ficial, to be cured by rearing several generations free 
from drinking usage. 

— Natural obstinacy excited by prohibitory law 
" applies to every criminal law and to every criminal 
act as well as to this." 

— The grand democracy of om* institutions can 
suppress the traffic, though the old world fails.^ 

— Discretion should not be given towns nor cities. 
License is a reversal of prohibition. " Everywhere 
rich voluptuaries will combine with irabruted igno- 
rance to bear down the sober industry of the com- 
monwealth." ^ " If I were to define a license law, 
stringent or otherwise, engrafted upon our present 
law or standing alone, I would say that it is a legal 
means of recruiting the army of drunkards with the 
approbation of ex-governors of the commonwealth, 

1 Argument, p. 104. 2 Argument, p. 107. 



104 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

whiskey-drinking priests, and members of the Fac- 
ulty of Harvard Medical College." ^ 

— Kespectable traffic is impossible. " Massachu- 
setts cannot enact a law that will make the selling 
of liquors respectable. If the angel Gabriel should 
come down to earth and sell liquors as beverages, he 
would not lift the business up to heaven, but the 
business would drag the angel down to hell." ^ 

— Alleged duplicity of temperance men retorted 
on " moderate indulgers." " Take the quantity and 
the quality of the liquors adulterated ; take the ter- 
giversations, subterfuges, and evasions of those who 
say they will obey the law and do not ; take all 
these into account, and we liave duplicity, and 
enough of it. Kemeraber that here is a foe to be 
watched, to be guarded ; and if you have a strong- 
hold on this enemy, in the name of righteousness 
and of good order, I exhort you not to let go that 
hold." 3 

The writer solemnly affirms, as the Friend 
would say, that in drawing out this analysis he 
did not mean to make the points turn against 
the argument. Not every point made is quoted 
in detail, — our space would not allow it, — but 

1 Argument, p. 110. ^ Argument, p. 110. 

8 Argument, p. 120. 



THE GROUNDS OF PROHIBITION. 105 

every strong one is stated, and as fairly as we 
are able. 

Dr. Miner is an able contestant, and a man 
of high moral standing. He would not use 
these same arguments, and in the manner he 
uses them, before the Supreme Court, nor before 
a jury of his peers, men of intelligence equal to 
his own ; he knows cause and effect too well. 
He spoke representative!}' to the Joneses elected 
as we indicated, to the galleries, and to the de- 
voted but unreasoning pressure behind. He 
knew their prejudices, and he carried his men 
with him, defeating John A. Andrew, who was 
one of the few American politicians with a 
statesmanlike comprehension. N'o man yet ever 
questioned the sincerity of his character. 

There is no difference of opinion betwet-n 
Andrew, Miner, or the writer on intemperance, 
the evils of intemperance, and the desirability 
of limiting drink and the facilities for drinking 
to the lowest minimum society will undertake 
in good faith and maintain effectually. The 
difference is, that some of us think there is such 
6* 



106 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

a thing as temperance in the use of liquors ; that 
the habits of society show this, and that it ought 
to be recognized positively in the law ; that the 
law should make legal what is a gross and open 
matter of fact, that the illegality should be con- 
fined to abuse in drinking, and to criminal abuse 
of the drinker, by the seller or by anybody else. 
Now these differences of opinion are based on 
facts, or they are not. If they are difference 
of fact, no amount of screaming at an unchris- 
tian and immoral world, no calling of persons by 
hard names, will overcome the difference. 

If teetotalism is the only moral basis ; if spir- 
ituous and fermented liquors are poisons, like 
strychnine and arsenic ; if sober industry never 
drinks ; if to drink at all is unscriptaral and un- 
christian ; if the great majority of Massachusetts 
people, in view of such plain truths, had made 
up their minds not to drink at all, why, in the 
name of reason, did not such a moral power 
show itself in the daily average life of the 
people of the State ? 

If only " rich voluptuaries," '' imbruted ig- 



THE GROUNDS OF PROHIBITION. 107 

norance." and a few "godly men in error" 
were on the wrong side of this qnestion, what 
causes can exphiin the enormous differences of 
social opinion and social action in the matter? 
An argument of this sort must sustain itself on 
all sides, or it topples over the sooner for the 
extra weight on one side. If these assertions 
were all proofs, and the proofs had their foun- 
dation in facts, just as they occur ; that is, in the 
facts of common sense and common experience, 
then the statute would work itself out as simply 
as the law against stealing. According to the 
Doctor's theory, and to frequent statements of 
abstinence politicians, the whole country portion 
of Massachusetts is reduced to strict temper- 
ance under the operation of the law. Only 
Boston and a few districts in the largest towns 
dare to sell any liquors under these prohibitorj^ 
statutes, they sa3^ " The valuation of Boston 
is stated by Hon. Otis Clapp at 1415,000,000, 
and the liquor interest at 140,000,000. John 
Glancy (who he is I don't know), at the liquor- 
dealers' meeting, placed the sum at 190,000,000 



108 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

to 1100,000,000. I think the valuation con- 
firms the last statement." ^ If only the consoli- 
dated wealth, " ex-governors," and the lowest 
orders of society have any interest in the sale 
of liquors, how is this immense sum employed ? 
Are fifty to one hundred millions of capital 
briskly occupied in pouring liquors into Boston, 
with the few large centres noticed and the 
small reservoirs in Vermont and New Hamp- 
shire, where similar laws prevail ? Connecticut 
and Rhode Island draw their supplies from New 
York ; and Maine must be left out of the ac- 
count, for have we not been assured that she is 
completely converted and sobered under the 
blessings of her own original law ? Verily, there 
is less "sober industry" in Massachusetts than 
w^e had all supposed, or else this sober element 
of society sometimes drinks, and helps to employ 
this large aggregation of capital, — a kind of 
capital which turns itself faster than any other 
in commerce, and makes the quickest possible 
returns of traffic. 

1 Argument, p. 77. 



THE GROUNDS OF PROHIBITION. 109 

Boston transacts a large business of all sorts ; 
and here it is shown that more than ten per 
cent of her whole property is employed in a 
traffic which, according to prohibitory advo- 
cates, is carried on with the outlaws and crimi- 
nals of society, men who haA-e no rights under 
the law. Evidently there is a mistake some- 
where, and, as Ave think, it hes in this wilful 
j)erversion of the facts. Good men exhaust 
their moral energy in obtaining impracticable 
statutes, and then shut their eyes to the plain 
fact that they are broken at every corner. At 
best the}^ institute temporary spurts of prohib- 
itory energy, wdiich drive the corner-breakers 
into secret retreats until the OA^erstrained ener- 
gies of the prosecutors relax, when they come 
out into da3*light again. These figures proA^e 
the position taken in our next chapter, A'iz., 
that one strong feature of these statutes as laAV 
is, that they are so easily broken. Fifty to one 
hundred millions of capital are accumulated ; 
and the observation of a child for any period 
of six months proves that this sum is not idle. 



110 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

Tlie possessors of this immense force are satis- 
fied in its profitable emploj^ment, or they would 
not keep in the same traffic, turning hither and 
thither with new expedients as the legislators 
and prosecutors devise new methods in pursuit. 
Just as the hare doubles away from his pursuers, 
except that the pursuing law goes with soft and 
easy feet, while the escaping liquor-seller has 
the sharp teeth and desperate grasp of the hound. 
We complain of their rapacious character as a 
class. When and where were outhiws other 
than rapacious, and who makes these men into 
outlaws ? 

Those who think unwise laws can be sus- 
tained by the moral sense alone should con- 
sider the old revenue laws of England. These 
statutes grew weaker and weaker in enforce- 
ment until nearly all the brandies, silks, and 
other articles of high value were smuggled 
from the continent, and freely hawked about 
the streets of London at such prices that every 
one could see the fact. The evil grew into 
such proportions that a Whig leader, making 



THE GROUNDS OF PROHIBITION. Ill 

a speech on revenue laws, drew an illicit pon- 
gee from his pocket, flourished it, like a flag 
of defiance, over the house of commons, and 
absolutely blew his nose in the face of the 
law-makers of the realm. It was the signal 
for the death of the unwise system ; and well- 
adjusted duties soon sent the silk handkerchiefs 
through the customs and the smugglers into 
honest industry. Did the Whig statesman 
break the law? Technically, we must allow 
that he did ; but in the better use of law and 
statesmanship he did right when he showed 
in open daylight the shams of society and the 
inconsistency of the law. 

We must invite notice just here to some 
remarks of De Tocque\T.lle on the influences 
which help " to mitigate that tyranny of the 
majority " which he dreaded: — 

" It must not, moreover, be supposed that the 
legal spirit is confined, in the United States, to 
the courts of justice; it extends far beyond them. 
. . . Tiie Americans, wlio have made so many 
innovations in their political laws, have introduced 



112 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

very sparing alterations in their civil laws, and 
that with great difficulty, although many of these 
laws are repugnant to their social condition. The 
reason of this is, that, in matters of civil law, 
the majority are obliged to defer to the authority 
of the legal profession; and the American law- 
yers are disinclined to innovate when left to their 
own choice. . . . Their (i.e., the judges') influence 
extends far beyond the limits of the courts ; in 
the recreations of private life as well as in the 
turmoil of public business, in public and in the 
legislative assemblies, the American judge is con- 
stantly surrounded by men, who are accustomed 
to regard his intelligence as superior to their 
own." — Dtmocracy in America, I., 357, 366. 

We should hardly expect the prohibitory 
law-makers to take this high view of the office 
and influence of lawyers. As a class, they 
do not recognize the proper province of this 
profession, looking on it as a sort of necessary 
evil, and not a natural outgrowth of civiliza- 
tion. Civil life has produced law and law- 
yers, and they are bulwarks of liberty as well 
as of good morals. We should expect that in 
arguing for a law the prohibitory men would 



THE GROUNDS OF PROHIBITION. 113 

produce all the legal authority they could 
muster; accordingly, we looked for some abso- 
lute opinion that the prohibitory statutes are 
good law through and through ; but, as stated 
in the analysis, we failed to discover it. They 
bad eminent lawyers on the stand, but could 
only get such semi-patriarchal, semi-legal ex- 
pressions as these : " If the prohibitory law 
could be executed so as entirely to suppress 
drunkenness, without any evil to the community 
from the absence of the means of drunken- 
ness," he was ''not prepared to say that a 
prohibitory law might not be a subject of legis- 
lation, without regarding the sale and use of 
intoxicating beverages as especially sinful." — 
Hon. Joel Parher?- 

Hon. Emory Washburn would " sustain the 
present law and prohibit the sale of liquor 
if he could ; and if it should be carried out, 
he would go the whole length of the mat- 
ter." 2 

None of these learned and wise men would 

I Miner, Argument, p. 83. ^ Argument, p. 84. 



114 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

say the law is good law, though they evidently 
meant to throw their social influence on the 
side of temperance, and even of prohibition, 
if this could be made practicable. They 
were waiting, in the same posture the courts of 
law were in, until society should show itself 
in earnest either to stop drinking and selling 
liquors or else to give up an impossible under- 
taking. No one who has studied social devel- 
opment and social law supposes the question 
will remain in such perplexing doubt for all 
time. 

To understand the guarded statements of 
these lawyers, we must consider the nature of 
the statutes themselves : — 

"The seizure clause, Judge Sanger says, is the 
most efficient iustrumentahty of the Law, and with 
which there is no difficulty whatever in the exe- 
cution of the law. Whether the jury agree or dis- 
agree, the Hquors are held, in which case they 
are practically confiscated; and if the dealer lays 
in another stock, that stock may also be seized." ^ 

This would be cool talk for the emperor of 

1 Argument, p. 87. 



THE GROUNDS OF PROHIBITION, 115 

all the Russias to utter, whatever people may 
thmk of it in this latitude. But these New 
Engiand States maintain the strongest govern- 
ment the world has ever known : it can stand a 
great deal of imprudence and unwisdom. The 
lawyers do not hold that arbitrary power can 
never be exercised for social purposes. It is one 
of the nice questions of social order when it is 
to be exercised, and then it must be used in the 
least possible amount ; above all, it must be ef- 
fective. A captain is allowed to cut away his 
mast only in extreme peril, and because it is 
an aggravation of the immediate danger. He 
proceeds at once to replace it. The institutions 
these arbitrary statutes endanger, viz., the right 
of property, trial by jury, pure testimony, gen- 
eral respect for law, &c., are to society as the 
masts and rigging are to a ship. To attempt to 
run good morals by breaking or impairing these, 
is as wise and proves to be as effective as it 
would be to sail a ship into safety by cutting 
away masts and supports. 

It is worth while to cite from INIill the state- 



116 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

ment of the Secretary of the British Temper- 
ance Alliance in his letter to Lord Stanley ; — 

"If any thing invades my social rights^ certainly 
the traffic in strong drink does. It destroys my 
primary right of security, by constantly creating 
and stimulating social disorder. It invades my 
right of equality, by deriving a profit from the crea- 
tion of a misery I am taxed to support. It impedes 
my right to free moral and intellectual develop- 
ment, by surrounding my path with dangers,^ and 
by weakening and demoralizing society, from which 
I have a right to claim mutual aid and intercourse." 

Mill replies : — 

" A theory of social rights, the like of which prob- 
ably never found its way into distinct language, — 
being nothing short of this, that it is the absolute 
social right of every individual that every other 
individual shall act in every respect exactly as he 

1 We believe if the abstinence reformers, to whose noble qual- 
ities we have paid grateful respect, only had a little sense of the 
humorous, tliey would see the fatal inconsistency of many of 
their positions and efforts. This preposterous issue can only 
be met by a joke. The writer has a weakness for warm 
stewed lobsters at supper, yet he is pretty sure of a nightmare 
if he indulges the appetite. Now, if we should gravely under- 
take a crusade against the lobster-dealer for surrounding our 
path with dangers, &c,, would it not be funny 1 



THE GROUNDS OF PROHIBITION. 117 

ought ; that whosoever fails thereof in the smallest 
particular violates my social right, and entitles me 
to demand from the legislatm'e the removal of the 
grievance. So monstrous a principle is far more 
dangerous than any single interference with liberty : 
there is no violation of liberty which it would not 
justify." 

It is hardly worth while to discuss Miner's 
counter-argument, that as truant children are 
restrained and educated, obscene books prohib- 
ited, &c., so social rights are established, and 
liberty restrained at the will of society. Minds 
which can see no difference between truancy 
and the right of an individual to drink, with a 
consequent right to purchase liquors, will legis- 
late blindly ; the}^ will not stop at distinctions. 
Mr. Mill and the secretary embody some of the 
most important social issues in their two state- 
ments, and the writer can add nothing to the 
complete refutation the philosopher gives the 
reformer. People who think with the secre- 
tary look on a statute, having a good moral in- 
tention once established by a majority vote, as 
having the same force as a law of God; no 



118 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

matter how it is executed, if the intention of 
the makers was good, then the statute is a part 
of the great moral scheme of the Ahnighty gov- 
ernment. This applies to social and moral law 
much the same principle which the Roman ec- 
clesiastics executed upon Copernicus with his 
physical laws. As the statutes of the church 
were established, then it was a law of God that 
the solar system could not move. As Mill 
indicates, the province of law is to work out 
ordinary social life with least oppression to the 
individual. Perfect government is for God 
alone, and God's laws, whatever be the theory 
of their transmission, establish themselves in 
the human soul through means of their own — 
that is, in kind, — and not by mere majority 
votes. 

While we are treating with the prohibitionists 
on- their own grounds, let us consider their 
methods of administration : — 

" Mr. Frank Edson, agent of the town of Hadley, 
testified that liquor-drinking was on the increase, 
and that clubs had sprung up in neighboring towns, 



THE GROUNDS OF PROHIBITION. 119 

instanciog Xorthampton. It appeared, on cross- 
examination, that he was not a total abstainer, that 
he had joined one of the objectionable clubs at 
Northampton, and that liquors were drank in that 
club. 1 submit that such testimony is not compe- 
tent. I believe that men who come up here and 
set forth the evils which they allege grow out of 
the law, and then turn around and confess that they 
are aidinsr and abettingr the breakinsj of the law 
themselves, are witnesses whose testimony should 
be received with great caution." ^ 

The point Dr. Miner has under consideration 
is matter of fact, as to whether there are clubs 
or uot. It was notorious that such clubs grew 
up wherever the law was actually enforced. 
Now, any legal or gOYernmental expert would 
hold that frank testimony like the above should 
be welcomed in any practical issue of govern- 
ment. A man who was manlv enoug^h to con- 
fess his own knowledge of such evil practices 
would, under most social systems, be encour- 
aged if he was telling the truth. The point to 
be ascertained was whether the law made temp- 
tations which hurt the "public welfare," as 
' Argument, 100. 



120 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

Paley has it. If no one could tell the truth but 
a man who totally abstained, then society was 
at low ebb, for those were few, as we have 
shown. Few persons would treat their own 
sons in this way, if they were bearing testimony 
as to the working of laws the parents had set 
over them. Probably the Joneses elected by 
coalitions took heed and " spotted " all the Ed- 
sons and similar men ; but was the town of 
Hadley, though it might receive a new liquor 
agent, benefited by this snubbing of a man who 
tried to tell the truth ? 

We have dwelt upon this point, because it 
illustrates much of the prohibitory method both 
in argument and in practical administration. 



PROHIBITION AND REGULATION 121 



PROHIBITIOISr AND REGULATION. 



'TpHE use of liquors should be regulated and 
the abuse prevented so far as possible. 
The traffic is dangerous, but is none the less 
necessary. The prohibitionists have always 
treated their various statutes, forbidding the 
sale of alcoholic liquors, as if they were mere 
rules for the good order of society. All societies 
make laws to promote the health of their peoples, 
and to stop nuisances or hurtful influences. No 
society or legislature has ever declared alcoholic 
liquors to be absolutely hurtful, nor has gone 
so far as to make the use and sale of liquors a 
nuisance in theoretical principle. This course 
would have brouofht the reformers ao-ainst the 
rocks of positive law, and they must take an- 
other direction. Accordingly, they admit the sale 
6 



122 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

under certain narrow restrictions, which must 
save the whole process from its conflict with posi- 
tive law. Then they proceed to cut off the sale 
of liquors as beverages, without establishing the 
fact that they are not beverages* legally con- 
sidered. In view of the facts of experience, and 
of the common habits of the society legislated 
for, is this in any fair sense a regulation of a 
traffic ? 

In debating the true meaning of a law or 
a custom, it is well to look into the words 
themselves which divide the issues. Words 
are more than names ; they are the moulds 
into which fluid ideas cast themselves. When 
the idea decaj^s, the word is either dropped 
out of use or becomes the ready-made shell 
for another idea kindred to it. Webster and 
Worcester define the word " prohibition " in 
terms nearly identical, — ''An interdiction; a 
forbiddance." They both quote in exposition 



1 " That spirituous and intoxicating liquors were still prop- 
erty, notwithstanding this act (Maine Law in Rhode Island), 
is certain." — B. R. Curtis, Circuit Court Reports, p. 328. 



PROHIBITION AND REGULATION. 123 

from Tillotson, viz. : " The law of God in tlie 
Ten Commandments consists mostly of 'pro- 
Jiihitions ; thou shalt not do such a thing." 
Let us look at the synonyms for regulate. 
" To direct, as applied to the admiuistration 
of affairs, is more authoritative than to con- 
duct, while conduct is more active or oper- 
ative. Regulate stands midway between." ^ 
Is there any actual correspondence or kindred 
agreement between these two terms ? The 
first word embodies the power of direct, posi- 
tive law, that portion of it which lies deepest 
in us. " The whole or a portion of the laws 
set by God to men is frequently styled the 
law of nature, or natural law ; being, in 
•truth, the only natural law of which it is 
possible to speak without a metaphor, or 
without a blending of objects which ought 
to be distinguished broadly. But, rejecting 
the appellation ' law of nature ' as ambig- 
uous and misleading, I name those laws or 
rules, as considered collectively or in a mass, 

1 Synonyms Discriminated. By C. J. Smith. 



124 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW, 

the Divine law,, or the law of GrodJ'''^ There is 
the root of prohibition, which old Tillotson 
found out; the tables of stone brought these 
strong bonds of order down to us ; let any 
legislator beware of trifling with these divine 
laws. 

A statute, in order to base itself on this 
strong and divine foundation, should carry 
with it the imperative moral sense, the over- 
whelming accord of the society enacting it, 
and at the time of its enactment. We might 
draw many interesting illustrations from the 
history of American slavery, but let us take 
simpler experience. Suppose a village owned 
a public square, around which some of the 
villagers wished to play base ball. Before 
any statute could be made, a yqtj large 
majorit}^ must agree whether they would play 
ball at all. If there was a public discus- 
sion to settle the principles of ball plajdng, 
as to whether a ball properly made, prop- 
erly handled, would or would not break the 

1 Austin's Jurisprudence. Ed. 1873. I. 88. 



PROHIBITION AND REGULATION 125 

windows exposed, would or would not break 
the thumbs of players, would or would not 
break the heads of little boys, the results could 
not be embodied in a statute until certain defi- 
nite principles were settled. Before they could 
regulate ball playing so that the minority 
would not be oppressed, society as a whole, 
not a mere majority, must decide the main 
question whether they would play ball at 
all, where the public had common rights. A 
statute to police the operation would effect 
little while property-owners had rights which 
the discussion could not touch. This is an 
illustration, and not a parallel. Balls do not 
mean whiskey, nor bats the clubs which ruf- 
fians use to knock over temperance law-makers ; 
we are only trying to make the above state- 
ment clear. 

Again ; hardly any sane person would 
think of making a statute at this day to stop 
the sale of playing-cards, whatever his own 
opinion of cards might be. He might reg- 
ulate the sale by any restriction utility might 



126 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

demand. He would forbid their sale to mi- 
nors, or sale for use in gambling, or un- 
dertake any such method which could be 
established judiciously. But fifty to one hun- 
dred years ago, in New England, a law pro- 
hibiting the sale would have found ready 
obedience. Playing-cards have not changed, 
nor has New' England lost its reverence for 
law meanwhile. But the attitude of society 
toward amusements has changed largely. To 
the old Puritan, any game of chance was an 
offence against the law of God ; he would pro- 
hibit cards totally. Playing-cards in the modern 
view (which sustains a statute against gam- 
bling) carry with them elements of evil, yet 
society will not cut itself off from their use 
because gamblers abuse them. 

These prohibitory statutes can have only one 
place in the system of civilized law : this system 
divides itself into three classes : — 

" The first comprises the laws (properly so 
called) which are set by God to his human creat- 
ures. 



PROHIBITION AND REGULATION 127 

" The second comprises the laws (properly so 
called) which are set by men as political superi- 
ors, or by men, as private persons in pursuance 
of legal rights. 

" The third comprises laws of the two follow- 
ing species : 1. The laws (properly so called) 
which are set by men to men, but not by men 
as political superiors, nor by men as private per- 
sons, in pursuance of legal rights. 2. The 
laws which are closely analogous to laws proper, 
but are merely opinions or sentiments held or 
felt by men in regard to human conduct. 

" I name laws of the first class the law or laws 
of Grod^ or tlie Divine law or laws. 

" For various reasons, which I shall produce 
immediately, I name laws of the second class 
positive law^ ot positive laws. 

" For the same reasons, I name laws of the 
third class positive morality^ rules of positive 
morality^ or positive moral rules. . . . 

" The name morality^ when standing unquali- 
fied or alone, may signify the human laws, 
which I style positive morality, as considered 



128 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

without reference to their goodness or bad- 
ness.'' 1 

These liquor statutes fall under the second 
division of the third class : they are analogous 
to laws proper, but are merely legal formulas 
for carr3dng into effect the opinions or senti- 
ments held or felt by men in regard to human 
conduct. Or, as we said on another occasion, 
they formulate the sentimental consciousness of 
the majority into a statute which shall attempt 
to make morals for the minority. 

Mr. Austin 2 does not state, nor do we mean 
to claim through him, that a statute under this 
class is necessarily bad law. We admit that if 
the great mass of society were totally abstinent, 
a statute against the sale of liquor as a bever- 
age might be maintained as an administrative 
expedient. There would then be an efficient 
"sanction" of the law, as the jurists' term 

1 Austin's Jurisprudence, I. pp. 174-176. 

2 We believe the authority of Austin is not disputed in the 
main principles of jurisprudence. Jolm Stuart Mill says of him : 
" He accomplished through life little in comparison with what 
he seemed capable of; but what he did produce is held in the 
very highest estimation by the most competent judges." 



PROHIBITION AND REGULATION. 129 

runs.^ The fact that it would be so easily main- 
tained would almost make it unnecessary. We 
do not need a statute against killing to "quicken 
our moral sense of crime. We need it to catch 
the murderer, and hang or imprison liim. The 
sanction of the law is anterior to it, and is not 
created by it. If people, or the great majority 
of people, did not desire to drink, then it would 
be easy to control the selhng of liquor. Prohi- 
bition or regulation would then iidjust itself to 
the positive morality of the law, which would 
become moral in the true sense, in that it would 
embody the best conviction of society. But 
to make the seller a criminal while the drinker 
commits no crime in drinking, is a legal absurd- 
ity, which the common sense of the community 
has detected, as their average conduct shows. 
Compare Burke, III. 819: — 

^ " The object of this law does not appear to be so much 
' for the suppression of drinking-houses and tippling-shops/ as 
its title would seem to import, as for the destruction of intoxi- 
cating liquors — because they may be injurious to the commu- 
nity. The main principle of all these statutes is the same. 
The later ones are changed only in details." — Curtis^ Circuit 
Court Reports y p. 337. 

6* I 



ICO PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

" No other given part of legislative rights can be 
exercised, without regard to the general opinion of 
those who are to be governed. That general opinion 
is the vehicle and organ of legislative omnipotence. 
Without this, it may be a theory to entertain the 
mind, but it is nothing in the direction of affairs. . . 
In effect, to follow, not to force, the public inclina- 
tion ; to give a direction, a form, a technical dress, 
and a specific sanction to the general sense of the 
community, is the true end of legislature." 

Failing in this moral sanction, the prohibi- 
tionists substitute the pressure of a majority 
vote, and the feeling which the evils of intem- 
perance always excite in any humane person. 
Now, both these principles are powerful in their 
legitimate sphere, but neither one can enforce 
a statute law unless it be sustained by other 
powerful influences, which combined, make up 
even justice. Here is an appetite which is 
Common, nay, well-nigh universal. Stimulants 
are used from the poles to the equator, — a fun- 
gus in Siberia ; betel and bhang or hemp in 
Asia ; ava in Polynesia ; fermented mare's milk 
in Russia, where it is too cold for vegetable fer- 



PROHIBITION AND REGULATION. 131 

mentations ; mate in Soutli America ; coca leaf 
in Peru; tea, coffee, tobacco, opium, alcoholic 
and fermented liquors in all quarters of the 
earth : all these attest a desire, a craving for 
stimulants, which is more than cosmopolitan ; 
it is human. A portion of the people in one 
country assert that this desire is injudicious and 
harmful. They prohibit all sale of alcoholic 
stimulants, articles desired by the larger half 
of the community, because, as^ they say, the 
state should not allow rumsellers to make pau- 
pers and criminals. The evidence is no more 
certain that, a pauper or criminal will be made 
when a man buys a glass of beer or whiskey, 
than it is certain when a person buys a rope 
that he will hang himself. Neither a majority 
vote nor a moral sentiment will chanof-e this 
essential principle, and make the gratification 
of a natural appetite into a crime against the 
state. There are two courses open to the mor- 
alists. Either remove the desire from individ- 
uals, or take control of the traffic and gratify 
the desLre in its minimum. Imperial or Papal 



132 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

Rome themselves could not make a third course 
possible. If the legal traffic is absolutely sup- 
pressed while the appetite remains, it merely 
runs into illicit channels, as we have shown. 
y An absolute proof of the exceptional and un- 
natural character of prohibition is afforded by 
its success in those rare cases where it has suc- 
ceeded. For example, during the great Boston 
fire it was easy to close all liquor shops and stop 
the sale effectively for some days. This was a 
despotic measure, made reasonable by the ex- 
traordinary occasion ; therefore everybody, sell- 
ers and drinkers, generally acquiesced. " In 
the midst of arms the laws are dumb." Law,, 
in its nature, must be fitted to the common liv- 
ing of the people. 

" Yet, though hot waters be good to he given to 
one in a swound, they will burn his heart out who 
drinks them constantly when in health. Extraor- 
dinary courses are not ordinarily to be used, but 
when enforced by absolute necessity." — Fuller's 
Holy State. 

As men are constituted to-day, as the princi- 



PROHIBITION AND REGULATION. 133 

pies of civilized law are to-day, the point at 
issue is, has a person a right, under the law, 
to drink a glass or a teaspoonful of alcoholic 
liquor ? If he has that right, he has a right to 
buy it, and if the state interferes to regulate the 
natural traffic, it is bound to furnish reasonable 
means for the gratification of the buyer's desire. 

If a man offended against the law of God in 
drinking, then we could readil}^ bring the seller 
under one of the great divisions of positive law 
stated above. We are aware a few abstinents 
take ground that drinking is an absolute infrac- 
tion of God's laws, ^.e., by interpretation of 
Scripture. Let them prove it, and the liquor 
statutes will mend themselves very quickly. 

To aggravate the results of contingent crimes 
does not raise the tone of the community either 
morally or according to positive moral law. 
To maintain the moral tone of society in Eng- 
land, only a short time since, they thought it 
necessary to transport a petty thief, or even to 
put him to death.i The practical result was, 

^ 1 It was not until 1811 that Romilly procured the repeal of 



134 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

that there were more and worse hardened crim- 
inals ; society was not bettered thereby. This 
is merely an evidence of the bad working of 
moral principles in unwise laws. By construc- 
tively making an artificial criminal out of the 
liquor-dealer, we have made these sellers into 
a hard set morally ; we have not helped society, 
nor the positive morality of the law. 

If these things be so, the reader naturally 
asks how could the laws be enacted or how 
sustained? In our introductory statement we 
sketched the process by which a legislature is 
made, embodying the public sentiment which 
creates these statutes. A majority is thus con- 
structed out of heterogeneous and inconsistent 
elements. We have seen its method of work- 
ing and the results it produces in liquor statutes. 
To comprehend the dangerous power of this 

these cruel statutes ; then Lord Ellenborough opposed. " Steal- 
inaj privately in a shop goods to the value of five shillings or in 
a dwelling to the value of forty shillings were capital fel- 
onies." Likewise they repealed " the ridiculously bloody en- 
actment of Elizabeth, which made it a capital offence in soldiers 
and marines to be found wandering about the realm without a 
pass." 



PROHIBITION AND REGULATION 135 

majority, let us heed the words of that saga- 
cious and friendly observer, De Tocqueville : — 

" When an individual or a party is wronged in 
the United States, to whom can he apply for re- 
dress ? If to public oj^inion, public opinion consti- 
tutes the majority ; if to the legislature, it represents 
the majority, and impHcitly obeys it ; if to the ex- 
ecutive power, it is appointed by the majority, and 
serves as a passive tool in its hands. The public 
force consists of the majority under arms; the jury 
is the majority invested with the right of hearing 
judicial cases; and in certain States even the judges 
are elected by the majority." . . . 

" The majority possesses a power which is physi- 
cal and moral at the same time, which acts upon the 
will as much as upon the actions, and represses not 
only all contest but all controversy." ^ 

A power thus constituted makes a statute, 
bringing the whole power of civil government, 
with the weapons of arbitrary search and seizure, 
to force the common people to stop buying 
liquors for beverages. Arbitrary prohibition, to 
exist with free institutions, must be enforced 
in the common living of freemen, else there is 

1 Democracy in America, I. 332, 337. 



136 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

tyranny of one portion of the people over an- 
other portion. When Mr. Seward's "little bell 
tinkled," every thoughtful person shuddered, 
yet he thought that our political life was in 
imminent peril, and he submitted to this arbi- 
trary stretch of power. Had Mr. Seward used 
this privilege in any police service or matter of 
regulation, in any way except for the very sal- 
vation of national political life, he would him- 
self have been "tinkled" into Fort Warren. 
^ A statute, before it becomes assured law, 
must pass through the lower and higher courts. 
They consider whether it is prohibited under 
the constitution, or whether it conflicts with 
other provisions of constitutional law already 
established. Finally, they consider it in the 
light of the great principles of reason and jus- 
tice which underlie all law. In fact, these liquor 
statutes have never been subjected to this cru- 
cial test. The waves of moral sentiment have 
driven the statutes forward from point to point, 
in the manner De Tocqueville shows the major- 
ity have power to do. One of the best features 



PROHIBITION AND REGULATION 137 

of civilized law in Anglo-Saxon communities 
is in its ability to adjust itself to tlie growing 
life of the people. The courts, rigid and formal 
as they are, sympathize with popular feeling, 
and reflect it faintly in their conduct. This 
was illustrated in the history of American sla- 
very; the courts gradually swayed about until 
they made into law the political action of 
the people. Slavery never seemed so strong 
as when it had the supreme court in its influ- 
ence, and had established its arbitrary statutes 
under the law. It was the recoil from this 
tyranny over a free nation which sent people, 
courts, and government into a war for its de- 
struction. The courts have never passed on 
the essential features of these arbitrary statutes. 
They have been disposed to push the policing 
power of the law to its extreme limit, in order 
to give play to the sentiment and power of the 
majority in its desire to suppress intemperance. 
The great principles of positive law have never 
yet been fully applied to a liquor statute. 

Many partial and unjust laws stand on a like 



138 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW, 

insecure basis. The freedom from taxation of 
church property, for example, is believed by 
good authority to be unconstitutional. The 
matter has never been tried. When the early 
meeting-houses were built, that seemed the 
easiest and simplest mode of establishing public 
worship. Gradually, in our complex civiliza- 
tion, it is growing into grave abuse. Probably, 
as it grows worse, it will antagonize public opin- 
ion until the courts feel the pressure and abolish 
the evil. 

Besides, as we have shown, the readiness to 
be violated which was inherent in these pro- 
hibitory statutes gave them an elasticity of 
resistance they would not have had if better 
executed. The lesions and breaks they con- 
stantly received made the natural legal resist- 
ance less violent. Why resist in the courts ai 
law which was so easily broken in detail? 
Few liquor-dealers would pay tens of thousands 
of dollars to obtain a legal privilege of selling 
when they were making hundreds of thousands^ 
by selling illicitly. 



PROHIBITION AND REGULATION 139 

" It is of great importance in a republic not only 
to guard the society against the oppression of its 
rulers, but to guard one part of society against the 
injustice of the other part. Justice is the end of 
government; it is the end of civil society."^ 

Jefferson said : " The executive power in our 
government is not the only, perhaps not even the 
principal, object of my solicitude. The tyranny 
of the legislature is really the danger most to 
be feared, and will continue to be so for many 
years to come." 

These are not the shrieks of alarmists, but 
the grave opinions of men who knew the 
organization of this American society. In view 
of this imperial power of the majority, with its 
liability to abuse, it behoovQS us as citizens 
to consider the exact relations of the majority 
to every statute which they enact. 

In the early portion of this chapter we re- 
marked that a prohibitory and penal statute 
should bring to its execution the overwhelm- 
ing accord of society. Perhaps our thought 
would be stronger if we should say natural 
accord. Nature uses two forces mainly in her 
1 Federalist, 51, Jas. Madison. 



140 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

operations on our earth. One is tlie power 
of Aveight, we call gravitation, and the other 
is the power of growth, we call vital force. 
A gardener lately contrived ingenious appara- 
tus by which he made a growing squash lift 
over two tons of weight. The simple weight 
of the vegetable might be a hundred pounds. 
It is this vital power of truth and justice 
which gives natural force to the decrees of 
a legislature. The majority can sit down with 
its weight wherever it pleases ; it can gain vital 
success for its decrees only when it adjusts 
them to the great natural laws ingrained in 
the nature of man himself. 

• Law must be considered not in the light 
of theory, but of common usage. . Putting 
out of the account the criminal classes and 
habitual drunkards, we would ask the reader 
what proportion of his friends abstain from al- 
coholic hquors. We mean by abstention, that 
it be in practice absolute. You may apply the 
medicinal limit at one point, your neighbor at 
another ; but the expression " total abstinence " 



PROHIBITION AND REGULATION, 141 

and its correlative " prohibition " are as strong 
as language can make them. The writer has 
seen decent people in a good many sections of 
New England, and he has never yet found a 
community where one person in every three 
abstained absolutely. Now, we have shown that 
prohibition is not regulation; that it has been 
maintained in abeyance by the legal authority, 
while the moral force of society might work 
out the habits and ordinary living on which 
any sumptuary statute must base itself. If 
this change of living comes not, then the 
statutes are tyrannical. It is hard for an 
American, wrapped in party toils, hampered 
by caucuses, and governed by politicians, to 
comprehend that he may be the innocent cause 
of a tyranny such as Madison so forcibly de- 
scribes. Yet the writer believes that all of 
us are implicated, as he will try to show. 

The liquor statutes, viewed in a large sense, 
are laws for sellers and drinkers both, — for you 
and for me. Every law must have an effective 
" sanction." 



142 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

" ' Command ' and ' duty ' are, therefore, cor- 
relative terms. . . . The evil which will probably 
be incurred in case a command be disobeyed, 
or (to use an equivalent expression) in case 
a duty be broken, is frequently called a sanc- 
tion., or an enforcement of obedience.^ ... a 
punishment. But as punishments, strictly so 
called, are only a class of sanctions, the term is 
too narrow to express the meaning adequately." ^ 
The " sanction, of the law against stealing is 
not merely penal and criminal, it is in our ab- 
horrence of the moral wrong. Now, when we 
vote laws on these moral issues, from the various 
motives stated in the foregoing, part}^ pressure, 
moral uneasiness, social bearing, &c., we do not 
consider this grand principle of sanction which 
should first inspire our conduct, or our civic 
attitude, as we have called it. We forget that 
every right carries with it a corresponding duty, 
we speak of right legally. When you enact 
that one class of persons shall carry out a cer- 
tain law, you thereby enlarge the right of these, 
i Austin, Jurisprudence, I. 92. 



PROHIBITION AND REGULATION 143 

and you obligate another class by a duty.^ The 
law officers must execute ; all others compre- 
hended must obey. jS'ow, the strange mist in 
our minds has befogged the notions of temper- 
ates in this regard. A moral right is essential 
and sacred, born of the divine within ; a legal 
right is a constructive and technical thing, by 
which society administers order and justice. 
While it lasts, it is strong as gravitation itself 
in an Anglo-Saxon community^^ The slave 
Burns was driven back into slavery under the 
power of the State of Massachusetts, though 
three-quarters of her freemen would have killed 
every man who laid a hand on him, if simple 
murder had been the only crime involved. 

The use of liquor runs so easilj^ into passion- 
ate abuse, that every man touches it nervously. 
Above all, sensitive persons dread the influence 
of their acts upon others. All this we formulate 
at the polls into a legal right to restrain the 
sale of the dreaded stuff; the legal duty which 

^ " Rights and obligations, though distinct and opposite in 
their nature, are simultaneous in their origin, and inseparable 
in their existence." — Bentham's Theory of Legislation, p. 93. 



144 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW, 

should follow Ave do not propose to ourselves, 
but lay it upon others. Every t-emperate man 
voting prohibition all these years has not pro- 
hibited himself thereby, — he has meant to pro- 
hibit somebody else. The sale and use of 
liquors prove this. The temperate see a drunk- 
ard in the gutter, an orphan in the asylum, a 
whiskey- dealer wallowing in his gains ; they 
transmute this moral sensibility into a legal 
right of prohibition. This legal right thus be- 
comes a tyranny, for there is no corresponding 
change in the habits of the majority or of the 
whole public. As said above, the legal right is 
imposed by the majority, who must always in- 
clude the temperates : the legal duty, the func- 
tion of obedience, is laid on a minority. The 
consequence is the same which has proceeded 
from all tyrannies, — lying, fraud, plunder, and 
suborning of testimony. These things have 
been done by good men with good intentions, 
but a moral purpose cannot sustain a legal right 
or power, unless that right S3^mbolizes the actual 
conduct of the people, and not their maudhn 
sensibilities. 



PROHIBITION AND REGULATION 145 

One essential cause of the weakness of these 
statutes in their practical application is to be 
found in the indirection, which is in their con- 
ception and intention. They are made to stop 
the sale of liquors. Why? Because the sale 
is wrong. Why is it wrong ? Because people 
drink them, and great harm ensues. Is it wrong 
to drink liquors ? Here not one person in 
ten could give an affirmative answer. No body 
of legislators or voters has ever said or believed 
that it is absolutely wrong to drink a glass of 
liquor. Yet the statute proceeds as if it were a 
crime to drink, and the seller was a participator. 

The sale of lottery tickets is forbidden ; but 
it is because they are used in gambling, and 
gambling is against the law. 

Bad houses are forbidden ; it is because forni- 
cation is a crime under the law. 

The sale of bad books is forbidden ; but it is 
because they are bad in essence, and no one but 
a few criminals claims otherwise. 

The sale of gunpowder and other regulative 
measures stand on different ground. 
7 J 



146 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

The action of prohibition is indirect ; it lays a 
penalty on a deed which is not a crime, which, in 
fact, never becomes a crime, but in certain con- 
tingencies leads a man into drunkenness, and 
thence he falls into crime. A process so winding 
and circuitous necessarily carries crooked ways 
and shaky proceedings ^ into the administration 
of the law itself. Prosecutors, advocates, and 
witnesses are all moving in a false light, which 
deranges the perspective of common justice 
and common judicial proceedings. The statute 
which forbids sale has been broken. The per- 



1 One Sypher, a longshoreman, was prosecuted by a liquor- 
dealer for perjury in a liquor case, and we cite from the report 
of the "Providence Journal," December 23 : — Sypher testified : 
*' A bargain has been made between myself and Mr. Eead 
{i.e., the state constable) to furnish testimony in liquor cases." 
The state constable testified : " The defendant had entered 
into connection with the state constabulary, and made an 
agreement to furnish evidence in liquor cases." He made 
memorandums in a book furnished by the constable. Another 
witness testified that Sypher '' stated that he had entered into 
a compact with the state constables, by which he was to re- 
ceive -$5 for every case in which he testified ; he w^as asked if 
he got $5 in case the' prosecution failed, and my impression is 
that he answered that it made no difference whether the case 
failed or not." These are the artificial crimes which artificial 
laws breed and nourish. 



PROHIBITION AND REGULATION. 147 

son who participated in tlie act, tlie drinker, 
feels no sense of crime ; indeed, the law nowhere 
makes him criminal. The communit}^ in which 
the drinker moves — and a man rarely rises 
above the moral sense of those around him — do 
not regard the act of drinking as a crime. Then 
the penalty is out of all proportion to the offence 
involved. This affects the testimony, affects 
the prosecutor, affects the court. It is well 
known that it is hard to get a verdict for mur- 
der from a jury, every member of which carries 
a pistol in his pocket. The state is placed in a 
position where it creates crime out of a simple 
act, not in itself evil, pursues by testimony not 
fair in the ordinary sense, and convicts under 
an unwilling as well as blind justice. The 
whole process, from the inception of the law to 
the conviction of the criminal, is artificial and 
not vital. 

This and almost every argument against pro- 
hibition is met by the rejoinder, " Society has a 
right to protect itself." When used in a gen- 
eral sense, this is one of those sins^ular maxims 



148 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

or saws wliicli Bentliam terms a fancy. " What 
is this reason? If it is not a distinct view of 
good or evil, it is a mere fancy ; it is a des- 
potism, which announces nothing but the in- 
terior persuasion of him who speaks."^ Fully 
expressed, the saying would be, " Society is all- 
powerful. I think this act (whatever the same 
may be) is a proper exercise of its power. 
Others ousj'ht to think so. Therefore this act is 
right." 

We think this widely diffused notion merely 
confounds the terms " sovereignty " and " right." 
The sovereign power is absolute and " is legally 
nncontrolled both from within and without." 
A large number of persons and a few common- 
wealths in the United States misinterpreted 
this plain truth about the year 1861, and great 
tribulation resulted thereby. An old fisherman, 
whom the writer knew, though a man of strong 
character, sometimes over-indulged in his cups. 
One cold night, when in this state he turned 
every member of his family out of doors, saying, 

1 Theory of Legislation, p. 74. 



PROHIBITION AND REGULATION 149 

*' I will be d — d if I don't show you Captain 
Barber lives here." This absolute principle is 
inherent in government ; it is oriental. But it 
has been the business of civilized people of the 
Teutonic and Anglo-Saxon races especially to 
frame heavy checks and restraints which they 
have imposed on this authority ; until the mean- 
est citizen or smallest infant has rights before 
which supreme arbitrary power itself must fold 
its hands in dumb silence. " When the sover- 
eign power commands its subj'ects to do or 
forbear from certain acts, the claim for such 
performances or forbearances which one person 
thereby has upon another, is called a rigM ; the 
liability to such performances or forbearances is 
called a duty ; and the omission of an act com- 
manded to be done, or the doing of an act com- 
manded to be forborne, is called a wrongs ^ 

'^ All sovereign legislatures, whether of one 

or many, are, and are alone, the sources 

from which all rio-hts flow. Yet we hear of 

original rights, natural rights, &c. . . . All that 

* Geo. Cornewall Lewis. Political Terms, p. 7. 



150 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

those persons mean is, that in their opinion the 
claims which they call rights ought, in sound 
policy, to be sanctioned by law. It is the duty 
of such persons to show that sound policy re- 
quires what theif require."^ 

The burden of proof lies on the maker of a 
statute. He must show that the proposed meas- 
ure forbids something evil in itself. This makes 
a positive law against crime, which society 
knows to be crime. These statutes need no 
argument for their right to be ; the question is 
merely one of methods. Or, in the second 
place, he must show that his measure is proper, 
in that it will prevent practices by which evil 
IS directly incurred. The question then be- 
comes one of experience ; the statute-maker 
must above all things show that it will suc- 
ceed.2 

1 Geo. Cornewall Lewis. Political Terms, pp. 23, 24. 

2 People talk of the easy success of these liquor statutes if 
this or that could be granted. They forget the inherent diffi- 
culties of the situation. We would say a States prison could 
keep its inmates from drinking. Yet in Sing Sing an astute 
convict entrusted with the vegetables managed to secrete pota- 
toes, distilled them, and sold the whiskey to his fellows. 



PROHIBITION AND REGULATION. 151 

" The legislator is not the master of the disposi- 
tions of the human heart, he is only their interpre- 
ter and their minister. The goodness of the laws 
depend upon their conformity to general expecta- 
tion. . . . To become the controller of expectation, 
the law ought to present itself to the mind as cer- 
tain to he executed; at least no reason for presuming 
the contrary ought to appear. Is there ground for 
supposing that the law will not be executed ? An 
expectation is formed contrary to the law itself. 
The law then, is useless. It never exercises its 
power except to punish ; and these inefficacious 
punishments are an additional reproach to the law." ^ 

It is not enough to show that there is great 
evil at work, and to stop it would be a good 
thing. The makers of these secondary statutes 
must show by overwhelming testimony that 
their principle of legislation will do the work 
and accomplish its ends, or else there is no 
foundation, no right of being, for the law itself. 
All the rights of society, inherent or acquired, 
cannot go beyond these two principles stated 
above. A people drunk with a passion, whether 
of anger or of fanaticism, maj^ impose any stat- 
1 Bentham. Theory of Legislation, pp. 148, 153. 



152 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 



"ute they please ; it may obtain an abstract foun- 
dation, just as our friend, Captain Barber, 
established his authority. But although, in one 
sense, the sovereign power is never wrong, the 
great principles of justice finally upset the stat- 
ute. Nemesis pursues peoples and statutes as 
well as individuals. 

For example, the use of fine bolted wheaten 
flour is a partial evil. If a majority, however 
constructed, could impose a statute that every 
one should eat coarse hulled flour, this measure 
would fall within these fancied "rights," and 
establish itself as a function of the state. It 
would none the less be a tyranny, and even after 
vested rights had been satisfied the law would 
never become a living success. Fine white 
bread would taste sweeter than ever, and each 
man would say that he would decide for himself 
what flour his stomach should digest. 

The liquor traffic, like other trades, has al- 
ways been more or less controlled by statute 
law. But the principle of prohibition is a new 
contrivance quite recently introduced. It does 



PROHIBITION AND REGULATION. 153 

not undertake the control of a traffic, it under- 
takes the control of the appetite of every indi- 
vidual so far as the beverage of alcoholic liquors 
is concerned. We have shown that the stat- 
utes laid in this principle, so far from having 
an " expectation " of success, have uniformly 
failed. In application, they have never suc- 
ceeded long enough to be called working 
laws. 

An odd conceit, we can hardly call it an argu- 
ment, which the prohibitionists put forth, is the 
claim that if you impose any restriction on the 
•seller of liquor, through requirement of Hcense 
or otherwise, you thereby take away the natural 
right of the citizen to purchase, and thus estab- 
lish the same principle as they attain through 
prohibition. When the history of this legisla- 
tion comes to be read in a disinterested time, 
we venture to predict nothing will seem more 
strange than this notion which is put forward 
through one and another argument. Accord- 
ing to this theory, the government has forbidden 
and attempted to cut off about every action 
7* 



154 PROHIBITORy LIQUOR LAW. 

which enters into the daily life of the citizen. 
Look at a few instances. 

The city provides that we shall give our 
refuse matter to licensed swill-carts. Does it 
thereby forbid the carrying away of garbage 
from our premises ? 

It licenses a few persons to sell gunpowder. 
Does it prevent every one from obtaining pow- 
der when he desires it ? 

It prevents the sale of adulterated milk, and 
obliges the milk-dealer to use a standard meas- 
ure. Do these methods prevent us from getting 
milk when we desire it ? 

It allows no one but an authorized physician 
and pharmaceutist to prescribe and prepare 
medicines. Does that prevent us from obtaining 
arsenic to kill rats, although some people may 
use the poison for suicide? 

They argue, in turn, that there is no parallel 
between regulation of milk, gunpowder, and 
similar traffic, and the sale of liquors, which is 
exceptional. This begs the question. The 
state would cut off the sale of liquor as a bev- 



PROHIBITION AND REGULATION. 155 

erage, eitlier because it is a poison always inju- 
rious, or because from actual experience it has 
found the prohibition useful. Now the poison 
theorj^ of alcoholic liquors is at best in abey- 
ance. It never was an established proof on 
which governmental interference could be based. 
Latterly science tends more and more in the 
opposite direction. As Dr. Hammond says, "If 
alcohol is not food, what is it ? We have seen 
that it takes the place of food, and the weight 
of the body increases under its use." ^ On the 
other hand, we have shown that prohibition, 
instead of being a tried success, is a failure. 
The notion that there is no practical difference 
between a certain amount of prohibition and 
a certain amount of license is absurd logically 
and in fact. Certain principles of government 
are radically different. The mildest form of 
confiscation differs absolutely from the worst 
kind of taxation ever invented. So prohibition 
cuts off, while license permits. Those who 

1 Psychological and Medico-Legal Journal. July, 1874, 
page 10. 



156 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

would make the former into the latter, are like 
the historical old woman who granted free per- 
mission that her boy should learn to swim. 
" Learn to swim by all means, but never go near 
the water." 

We claim that in reviewing prohibition, both 
from our own point of view and from that of its 
advocates, we have proven that it is not a regu- 
lation of the liquor traffic. Regulation presup- 
poses a use of liquors for a beverage, just as the 
common statutes look forward to a use of medi- 
cines or salt. The use of liquors as a beverage 
is a common and well-known fact. Prohibition 
proposes to interdict this use by a wholesale 
edict. It is not like forbidding the sale of poi- 
son to one intending suicide ; this is an excep- 
tional stoppage of a dark crime. The use of 
liquors as a beverage, whether they be food or 
not, is something which the majority of the 
community have adopted into their every-day 
life. With that common use of alcohol there 
goes an abuse which engenders among us a vast 
amount of vice and crime. To attempt to stop 



PROHIBITION AND REGULATION. 157 

the abuse and evil consequences by forbidding 
the use, is no more practicable than it would 
have been to cut off the use of pork by statute 
because much pork held " trichinae," and thus 
injured people. To prohibit the use of liquors 
by statute law — ix.^ to forbid their sale, which 
cuts off the legal enjoyment of them from all 
except the rich and strong — is not possible, and 
is wrong ; it is impossible, because it is wrong. 



158 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 



ANOTHER SYSTEM. 



A LTHOUGH it is out of the direct line of 
our argument, it accords with our moral 
purpose to offer a substitute for the prohibitory 
liquor laws. In our view, any system which 
could be fairly executed would be better than 
prohibition, which from its essential nature is 
incapable of execution. The first condition of 
any judicious system would be some substantial 
accord among the main body of the people leg- 
islated for. Nearly all our legislation on this 
subject has been initiated either by a small sec- 
tion of passionate reformers on the one hand, or 
a section of liquor-dealers on the other. These 
elements must ever be potent, but neither should 
be, or need be, all-powerful. The whole com- 
munity holds the main interest in this impor- 
tant question, and sooner, or later this great 



ANOTHER SYSTEM, 159 

public, central good will assert itself and control 
the wings of abstinence and free license accord- 
ing to its own larger and mastering judgment. 
Great reforms always work out in this way. 
The American nation thought for generations, 
and honestly too, that slavery was a side issue, 
affecting only fire-eaters or abolitionists. Sud- 
denly it awakened to the consciousness that its 
own life was in danger ; then it settled the ques- 
tion, and settled it for the public good, not as 
either party desired or would have believed 
possible. 

No principle can e'ver unite this great pub- 
lic sentiment, and weld it into effective action, 
which is not founded on absolute justice. As 
the matter stands before the law, a man desir- 
ing a gill of whiskey or of beer has a right to it. 
The contingent fact that he may add other gills 
to his want, and thus make himself a drunkard 
or a pauper, is in practical life too remote for the 
law to control by forbidding the first want. 
No legislation looking so far into future risks 
ever did succeed. If a great mass of citizeus 



160 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

are moved by this desire, which cannot be 
shown to transgress a law of God, then it is 
the business of government to provide for the 
desire. The desire for the first glass of liquor 
is legitimate, and cannot be cut off by the risk 
or possibility of a fourth glass. A man who 
buys too much tenderloin steak may make him- 
self dyspeptic, or the woman who buys a silk 
dress may make herself a pauper ; but the law 
cannot look to such issues. This principle of 
individual liberty goes to the very foundations 
of every law, social custom, or personal opinion. 
It is too large and too important to be much 
affected by the evils of intemperance, great as 
those evils are, individually and socially. John 
Stuart Mill says : — 

" l^either one person nor any number of persons 
is warranted in saying to another human creature 
of ripe years, that he shall not do with his life for 
his own benefit what he chooses to do with it. He 
is the person most interested in his own well-being 
. . . the interest which society has in him individ- 
ually (except as to his conduct to others) is frac- 
tional, and altogether indirect; while, with respect 



ANOTHER SYSTEM. 161 

to his own feelings and circumstances, the most 
ordinary man or woman has means of knowledge 
immeasurably surpassing those that can be possessed 
by any one else." ^ 

A few theorists place the basis of rights in 
society and not in the individual, holding that 
personal rights are privileges which society 
grants for its own good. The legitimate func- 
tions of society have been coherently developed 
to their fullest extent by Mr. Mulford, in his 
work on " The Nation." He gives the nation 
or society the powers and responsibilities of a 
moral being. But he definitely puts by the 
theory that societ}^ gives rights to the individ- 
ual. " There is in the nation the institution, 
not the creation of rights, since their founda- 
tion is in the nature of man, and their affirma- 
tion is in the nation." ^ 

It is established that the individual has in 
himself certain rights. When society trans- 
gresses these, it passes beyond the province of 

1 Mill on Liberty, p. 147. 

2 Mulford's Nation, p. 106. 

K 



162 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

law. As Professor Amos says, in another con- 
nection, it attempts to " deluge law with morals." 
Among these rights is that of drinking, so long 
as the drinker does not make himself a nuisance 
to others. However we may hedge him about, 
and restrain him, and prescribe the manner of 
his drinking and purchasing, for the social good, 
yet the original right cannot be extinguished, 
but remains unaffected. If my neighbor has a 
right of way across my estate, way must always 
be made for him. He cannot drive through my 
strawberry beds and clover fields ; I can regu- 
late that ; but a good and sufficient way must 
always be kept open. When society deliberately 
cuts off the power of the citizen to purchase 
liquors in reasonable amounts, it commits an 
act of injustice, no matter how good the intention 
may be. That injustice cries out until it rights 
itself ; it moves the foundations of society until 
the stone which the builders rejected becomes 
the head of the corner. 

Therefore we say society, as a whole, must 
take up this matter, and base the regulation of 



ANOTHER SYSTEM. 163 

the traffic on the principles of justice and the 
common sense of experience. We are met at 
once by the rejoinder from prohibitionists, that 
license laws have always failed in practice to 
satisfy the community. Suppose they have 
failed, that does not make prohibition just. 
Latterly, the license laws, and especially in the 
New England States, have been mere make- 
shifts, the lax reactions which always follow 
overstrained laws ; they have been the immoral 
result of over-moralization. The liquor dealers 
have controlled them, and they have been ad- 
ministered in no thorough spirit of regulation. 
The reason the liquor dealers have such strength 
is because prohibitory attempts put such a force 
of customers behind them. Take away this 
unnatural pressure, give reasonable play to the 
appetite of the individual, and then get his in- 
fluence in restraining the traffic for the good 
of society. The power of liquor dealers will 
then shrink to its natural proportions like that 
of other traders. 

We can offer a system of regulated traffic 



164 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

which is based on justice, respects the individual, 
and is worked in every detail for the benefit of 
the Avhole community, so far as this appetite 
can be controlled by any mechanism. It has 
the further advantage of success after more than 
eight years of trial. 

Sweden has always used liquors freely, and 
abused them as well. The people are northern 
in race as we are, and their climate has always 
favored a large consumption of spirits. One 
town, after trying free license, then partial 
licenses unsuccessfully, hit on the plan of con- 
centrating all the licenses into one associa- 
tion which should represent the public. The 
gradual growth of this system is detailed in 
" Macmillan's Magazine " for February, 1872, 
and October, 1873. We cite : — 

" In ^ Gothenburg (the second town of Sweden, 
a seaport with a manufacturing and trading popula- 
tion of 58,000 in 1872), all the public-house licenses 
are held by a single ' retailing company,' incorporated 
by royal charter. Each license representing, as with 
us, the right to open one public-house, the directors 
1 " Macmillan," vol. 28, p. 522. 



ANOTHER SYSTEM. 165 

use in different parts of the town just so many of 
their licenses as they deem required by the popula- 
tion. In the first place, they take care that all 
houses in which liquor is sold are light, well venti- 
lated, and roomy. Into each they put a manager, 
on the terms that he is to take all his supplies of 
spirits from the company, and to pay over to them 
every farthing received for spirits sold, his remuner- 
ation consisting of the profits on his sales of tea and 
coffee, malt liquors,^ cigars, and eatables, supple- 
mented, in most cases, by a fixed salary. Once a 
year the company's balance-sheet is^submitted to 
and audited' by the municipal authorities, and there- 
upon the entire amount of the net profits for the 
past twelve months is paid into the municipal treas- 
ury, and becomes part of the general revenue of the 
town. All this is an embodiment and earnest striv- 
ing after the realization of sundry definite conclu- 
sions about the drink traffic at which the Gothen- 
burgers arrived eight years ago. They embodied the 
results of their experience in the following four prin- 
ciples : 2 I. Spirits to be retailed without any profit 
whatever to the retailer, who can thus have no 
temptation to stimulate their consumption. II. The 

1 In " Sweden, a country of spirit drinkers, the trade in malt 
liquors has only quite recently been deemed important enough 
to require legislative regulation and restriction." 

2 " Macmillan," February, 1872, p. 311. 



166 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

sale of spirits on credit, or on the security of pledges, 
to be stringently prohibited. III. All houses in 
which the liquor trade is carried on to be well 
lighted, roomy, airy, and clean. IV. Good victuals 
at moderate prices, to be always procurable in drink- 
ing-houses by anybody demanding them. It was not 
in the nature of things that any private individual, 
trader or non-trader, should be found ready to carry 
out such a programme as this. It was tolerably ob- 
vious that if the scheme was to be put through at all, 
a number of the leading members of the community 
must loosen their purse-strings and put their shoul- 
ders to the wheel together. And this, thanks to the 
public spirit that has for years prevailed at Gothen- 
burg, was done promptly and effectually. Upon the 
requisition of an influential list of the townsmen, 
headed by several of the leading mercantile firms, 
the government granted a charter of incorporation 
to a company formed with the express object of 
working out a thorough reform of the local liquor 
trade, in accordance with the above principles. By 
the terms of this charter the maximum nominal 
capital of the company is fixed at 200,000 rix- 
dollars, or rather more than £11,000. Each share- 
bolder is declared strictly liable up to the amount 
of his guarantee (^^e., stock.) It has not, however, 
been found necessary, so far, to call upon the share- 
holders for any part of their subscriptions. Spirits 



ANOTHER SYSTEM, 167 

may not be served to a person apparently intoxi- 
cated ('overloaded' is the expressive term in the 
act), nor to a minor ; and the act, in its tender 
solicitude for the helpless tippler, provides that a 
person ' overloaded ' is not to be tm-ned out of the 
house. The Gothenburgers made up their minds 
that, though they could not stamp out the spirit 
trade, they could and must regulate it; and that 
their way of doing so" should be to limit the num- 
ber of spirit shops, to insure the purity of the 
spirits offered for sale, and, the most important 
point of all, to make it nobody's interest to 
stimulate the consumption, and by keeping these 
principles steadily in view, the Gothenburg com- 
pany have been, and it may be hoped will continue 
to be, the means of diminishing substantially and 
permanently the sum-total of drunkenness and crime 
among their fellow-townsmen." 

We do not like statistics in these mat- 
ters, but the curious can trace out these 
figures : ^ — 

" The percentages by police records of cases of 
drunkenness amongst the population have been : 
In 1864, 6.10 ; in 1865 (the company established at 

1 The " Fortnightly Eeview " says : " In Gothenburg the 
number of cases of delirium tremens has been diminished by 
one-third." 



168 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LA W. 

the beginning of October), 5.67; in 1866, 3.75; in 
1867, 3.58; in 1868, 3.50; in 1869, 2.56; in 1870, 

2.52; in 1871, 2.67; in 1872, 2.72." ^ 

With the rise of wages came an increase 
of drunkenness, but there was a deeper cause 
of trouble : — 

"Xot the pubhc-houses, but the 'retail' shops 
are the offenders, — places where the holders of what 
we term grocer-licenses sell spirits in quantities of a 
\12Mi-han (about a quart) and upwards, for consump- 
tion off the premises. This branch of the trade the 
company has never hitherto been able to control. 
There have been stumbling-blocks in the way of 
their supplanting the private grocer-business; and 
there still exists in the town no less than five and 
thirty private shops of this class, constant thorns in 
the company's side, conducted, as they naturally 
are, with a view above all things to profit; and so 
sedulously counteracting the endeavors of the com- 
pany to discourage the consumption of alcohol. The 
directors of the company know that cheap drink 
spells drunkenness, and that high prices, in this as 
in other trades, check consumption. So where they 
are absolute masters of the situation, in the public 
houses, they deliberately put a high price on the 
spirits served ; their tariff-j)rice for a glass of trdn- 
1 Fortnightly Review, vol. 28, p. 522, et seq. 



ANOTHER SYSTEM. 169 

vin (corn-whiskey, the staple alcoholic drink of the 
country, and particularly of the lower classes) being 
6 6>6, which is at the rate of 3 rix-dollars per 
han^ (equivalent to 5s. 10c?. per gallon); whereas 
they have to pay the distiller only 2s. 5 J. per gallon. 
Now the 'retailers' or licensees may not sell less 
than a \i.2Xi-kan = about 25 ordinary dram-glasses, 
at a time. ... So he gets a few kindred souls to 
practice 'saining' with him, that is, to club their 
small coins to make up the price of a \12\i-kan at 
the spirit-grocers, carrying the liquor to the nearest 
convenient corner (for consumption on the premises 
would be directly illegal), and there drinking it." 

They could not-reduce the amount of drunk- 
enness further while this evil was at work : — 

"We have done our best (says the company's 
report), but all our efforts are crippled while ' sai- 
ning' continues, and 'saining' will continue so 
long as the grocer-licenses remain in private hands, 
and are worked with a view to private profit. We 
are convinced there is one remedy, and only one, 
for the present evil, and that is for the municipality 
to undertake the sole and entire management of 
the local retail spirit trade, on the same terms as 
we already work the public houses. . . . Last Feb- 
ruary a remarkable series of meetings was held 
A "A kan is rather less than three-fifths of a gallon." 
8 



170 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

in Gothenburg. The Workingmen's Union sponta- 
neously took this matter into consideration . . . 
adopted two clear suggestive resolutions, which 
were forwarded to the representatives of Gothen- 
burg in the Diet, recommending (1) that the com- 
pany should be entrusted wdth all spirit-licenses, 
grocer as well as public-house; and (2) an increased 
excise duty on spirits, with the sure concomitant of 
higher retail prices. The new law will come into 
operation October, 1874." ^ 

In another year we shall learn how this new 
feature works in practice : — 

"What the company will do with their mon- 
opoly, may be pretty well predicted from their 
j)ast conduct. They will keep open only so many 
* grocer' spirit shops as maybe competent to sup- 
ply the natural unstimulated demand of the j)opu- 
lation. They will deliberately handicap these shops 
by so raising their prices, that for the quart of 25 
drams of branvin there will be charged something 
like the price of 25 separate drams at the public- 
house, thus removing the fundamental reason and 
attraction of the ' saining ' trick." 

1 " Since above was written the auction has taken place. 
After a keen competition twenty-Jive licenses were disposed 
of, for (in the aggregate) £2,000 more than thirty-Jive fetched 
last year, — a fact which shows the large profits realized 
lately by the private licenses. (August 14)." 



ANOTHER SYSTEM. 171 

Scotland, naturally first influenced by Swe- 
den, and a country whicli struggles hard with 
drunkenness, is moving rapidly toward this 
system. " The General Assemblies (in May) 
of the three principal church bodies of Scot- 
land, the Presbyterian Synod, the Established, 
and the Free Church, have dwelt upon it with 
marked emphasis and approval." The " Lon- 
don Spectator," ^ in commenting on the sys- 
tem, says: — 

"The merits of this system are conspicuous. 
They will be generally recognized, and the recog- 
nition cannot fail largely to affect the final judg- 
ment of the public as to its feasibility. Of course 
its grand recommendation is that it utterly disowns 
the prohibitive crotchet of your fi\natical 'Per- 
missionists.' It refuses to treat the question as if 
it were capable of being solved in the simple and 
direct manner that might apply to the choice of 
Hercules. It takes another ground from that of 
regarding it as a question between virtue and vice, 
virtue being typified in the austere respectability 
of the permissive prohibitionist, and vice in the 
portly form of the publican. So far we deem it 
rational and well-considered." 

I " Spectator," October 18, 1873. 



172 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

A few figures will show what the paj^ments 
to the town revenue from this source have 
been. " In 18G5, the company held thirty-nine 
licenses and paid in 50,782 rix dollars. Grad- 
ually increasing in 1871, the company held 
all = 61 licenses, and paid in 191,759 rix dol- 
lars," or, in round numbers, 97,000 United 
States gold dollars. 

The direct gains in money to the commu- 
nity through this system are great; the indi- 
rect are still greater, and cannot be measured. 
To begin with some of the more remote, the 
testimony of Gothenburgers shows an immense 
gain in the lessening of the traffic, and thereby 
a lessening of money expended for the indul- 
gence, and consequently a lessening of poverty 
and crime. The taking away of the profits 
from the common liquor-dealers is a collateral 
advantage hardly to be estimated, for these 
profits are too often badly used. The gain to 
the revenue is large, and is something which 
every tax-payer can see with the keen vision 
which affects the pocket more than the optical 



ANOTHER SYSTEM. 173 

nerve. Any man or woman who sees a hundred 
thousand dollars or a proportional sum going 
into the treasury of his town, will be a good 
special constable, though he may not hold a 
partisan appointment from the state, to help 
enforce the law against illicit traffic in liquors. 
The opposition of the lower end of the liquor 
trade would be strong, but it would lose that 
tremendous representative weight which its 
backing of customers now gives it in every 
political agitiition. Decent men, and not the 
indecent, make the strength of the liquor deal- 
er's custom, and they would rally to the sup- 
port of this system, for each one would see that 
his . own material as well as moral interest was 
furthered by paying the profits of his own 
diinking into the town coffers instead of the till 
of the common dealer. The importance of this 
detail will not so much weigh with some good 
women, or those earnest, impatient men who can 
see no good in enlisting the common, selfish 
motives of mankind in the service of the right. 
Men skilled in legislation and administration, 



174 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

however, know at once that no law works so 
easily or so well as that which secures the co- 
operation of a great mass of citizens through 
the details of its own operation. 

All these issues of the system are subordi- 
nate to the main question ; is it true, is it 
right ? The extreme prohibitionist will an- 
swer, with a shriek, that no sale of liquor for 
a beverage can be right. We have argued to 
little purpose, if we have not proved that this 
opinion is not held by any large number of 
persons, and, from the nature of the case, can^ 
not be sustained by any large number so long 
as men are as they are. The conscientious 
abstinent would be released from his unsatis- 
factory tugging at an impossible law, and 
enabled to turn his efforts toward a change 
in the inclinations of the drinker. We should 
have incorporated in this system all that the 
law can accomplish. First, a privilege is se- 
cured to every individual of supplying any want 
of his appetite Avhich under the law is legiti- 
mate ; secondly, all the fruits of this privilege 



ANOTHER SYSTEM. 175 

are husbanded for the use and benefit of 
society. Society incurs a certain risk when- 
ever an individual drinks, — a risk which is 
beyond that of the individual. As some com- 
pensation for this risk, it receives all the 
commercial profit, and retains control of the 
operation under the wisest rules it can en- 
join. Turn the question whichever way we 
may, sthis is the uttermost the state can ac- 
complish ; no ideal government could get more 
out of the law than these two principles 
yield. The absolute interdiction of the nat- 
ural appetite is beyond the power of any 
government, and must be reached by other 
means than statute law. The individual on 
his own ground is mighty against the pressure 
of the state, or of society in mass ; but he is 
weak and helpless against the moral assaults 
of other individuals. No one can withhold 
his ear from the appeal of an earnest moralist. 
There is the ground where the abstinent can 
reach the appetite of the individual, and there 
only. 



176 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

This system would require some change, 
but not much, to adapt it to our American 
life. First, we must have a strong public 
sentiment in its favor; then the wise men, the 
strong men of affairs, the administrative men in 
any community, must take hold, and carry the 
principle into successful operation. Whether 
it could succeed in cities like New York and 
London would be matter of experiment ; but 
there is every reason for its success in cities 
of moderate size or towns. We would open 
one restaurant with such a license for every 
one thousand inhabitants in a town, and grant 
a grocer's or package license for every three 
thousand or four thousand people. This would 
give about one place for sale or drinking in 
large towns and villages where there are 
now five to ten. In sparse districts the 
diminution would be less. If the practice of 
" saining " or clubbing drinks should obtain, 
then we would follow the Swedish example, 
and concentrate all the licenses in the one 
company of each town. Probably this prac- 



ANOTHER SYSTEM. 177 

tice would not be relatively so potent in 
America, yet it might interfere with the best 
working of the system. Still it would be bet- 
ter to come to the result gradually, through 
the convictions of the people, and not to start 
with all the pressure of a close monopoly. 
We should Hkewise be careful, over-careful 
even, in limiting the consumption by exorbitant 
prices. The American people, though wonder- 
fully patient, as these absurd prohibitory stat- 
utes well show, yet do not like to be governed 
too much. The higher prices should be made 
the greater the inducements to illicit traffic ; 
and, in our view, illicit traffic aggravates the 
evils of drinking enormously. We would have 
no secret places for drinking. If it is a good 
thing for a young man " to take a drink," 
then it is good to take it openly. If he 
needs it, he should not be ashamed of the 
fact, and the whole public sentiment would 
soon come to an expression of these principles. 
The sort of haK-sympathy which now goes 
with the dodging of an impossible law would 
8* L 



178 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW, 

be taken away from a fellow who skulked in 
holes, when every reasonable want should be 
gratified. This would not absolutely keep 
young men from error, but, in another method, 
though by the same principle as we indicated 
in the legal method, it would do for them all 
that a wholesome public opinion could do. 

Public sentiment can assist the individual, 
and draw him by a wise sympathy toward 
a better development of himself. It cannot 
make him, nor refashion him by statute law 
or wholesale clamor into a being differing 
from his own nature. 



IMMORAL LAW-MAKING, 179 



IMMORAL LAW-MAKING. 



"/^ENTLEMEN," said Edmund Burke, 
'' bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny. 
In such a country as this they are of all bad 
things the worst. Worse by far than anywhere 
else ; and they derive a particular malignity 
even from the wisdom and soundness of the rest 
of our institutions." ^ 

Human law is a mighty force ; it faintly re- 
flects the ordering power of Omnipotence itself. 
On the infinite side it is little and full of error ; 
on the finite side, in our actual life, it is majestic, 
and is the grandest reality we know. It is so 
great a blessing that generally we are not con- 
scious of it, as we breathe and see unconsciously, 
though light and air are the greatest of natural 
facts. The parts of law and lawful order which 
we do see are the least parts, and those which 

1 Rivington's Ed., III. 426. 



180 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW, 

give to the vulgar mind its notions of the prov- 
ince and character of legal administration. 
y^nPunishing criminals and adjusting the selfish 
conflict of rights is not the main province of 
law, though here it commonly manifests itself, 
and many do not look beyond these superficial 
results. The true action of law, that which 
makes or unmakes society, just as breathing 
affects the body for good or ill, lies deeper 
down, and embodies our living; — embodies it 
on the human and earthward side, as religion or 
the spirit of God with us embodies it on the" 
heavenward side. After all, what does the 
illuminated righteousness of a man do for his 
neighbors, unless he embodies it in " positive 
morality," as Mr. Austin terms it, or the moral 
order of the law, — something which enters into 
the actual living of the citizen, which is tangi- 
ble, and goes to the making of a state, just as 
plank and timber go into the hull of a ship ? 

The common idea of innocence and natural 
simplicity is pictured in the free life of the 
farmer at the plough, tilling his field in joyous 



IMMORAL LAW-MAKING. 181 

hope, and free from the cares which social re- 
straint and artificial laws have netted around 
less favored creatures. When did this natural 
farmer ever exist since the gates of Paradise 
closed on an idle recipient of God's bounty, and 
opened the world to a laboring partner of the 
Creator himself? What savage ever tilled his 
field without the harsh control of his chief, or a 
bitter struggle with his enemy ? Wretched as 
the interior of Africa is, yet Schweinfurth found 
order and government, despotic but effective. 
" One of the most influential personages of 
the neighboring race of the Lao was a woman 
already advanced in years, of the name of Shol. 
She played an important part as a sort of chief 
in the Meshera, her riches, according to the old 
patriarchal fashion, consisting of cattle." The 
New England Puritan, with gun and axe on 
either side of his plough, subduing the wild 
wood while he watched for the wilder savage, 
symbolizes the whole struggle which civilized 
man has carried on with nature and the natural 
man. 



182 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

Instituted law has come out of this long strug- 
gle ; not the mere policeman's club, though his 
badge carries the whole history upon it, but the 
pure spirit of order diffused through society, 
moving according to law, and not under the 
restraints of the law. It is not religion nor 
family life themselves, but it is to them as the 
bones are to the body, or the body is to the 
soul. 

It is an error, more or less common, that lib- 
erty lies outside instituted law or social order. 
That individual freedom is a something which 
man has kept back, while surrendering little by 
little of his natural rights in the developing 
contests, we have indicated above. In fact, 
there never was any such freedom or liberty 
since Adam began to board himself, instead of 
being fed as a brute is fed. He then had to 
consult Eve, and she was obliged to consult him, 
or they would have had a sorry dinner. Thus 
the family developed, and the state came after- 
ward. An individual is little more than a 
mathematical point or line without breadth or 



IMMORAL LAW-MAKING. 183 

thickness. In combination with others he finds 
his own powers, and builds the man, as we un- 
derstand him, out of his intercourse with other 
men. Tlie liberty a savage values was not the 
right to catch a fish or dig a yam, but the power 
to keep them, and to find his wife and children 
in his hut after he returned from a search after 
other rights ; and he at once surrendered what- 
ever he had to his chief, that he might have the 
liberty which comes through order, and cannot 
exist individually or unlimited by other liber- 
ties. It is through society and through law 
that we enjoy those individual rights which are 
so finely adjusted we cannot see the restraints, 
and call them natural, just as we call a beef- 
steak natural, though it is the result of long 
ages of fostering care applied by man to nature. 
This principle was laid down by Aristotle, and 
has been well developed by many great writ- 
ers : — 

"There is, indeed, no doubt that a wandering 
savage, who has occupied a plot of ground, pos- 
sesses the power of using his limbs, and cultivating 



184 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW, 

his land ; but to suppose that these liberties are, 
under a settled government, only spared by the leg- 
islature, and not created and secured by it, betrays 
a complete misapprehension of legal rights, and the 
acts of a sovereign body. Under an established 
government, no absence of law can be beneficial ; 
because every act which may be done by man must 
be either permitted or prohibited by the legislature. 
What the law does not forbid it sanctions; and 
"will protect those who do it from obstruction." ^ , 

We have purposely taken the broadest pos- 
sible theory of social rights, that we might show 
Burke's meaning when he says that a bad law 
in a good government is the worst tyranny. It 
is because law has so wound itself in with every 
strand of civilization, that any wrong produced 
by it becomes doubly severe. Some things 
•could be done under rude civilizations by law, 
i.e.^ by statute, which cannot be done success- 
fully now. Under a theocratic rule it was 
easy to prevent people from eating pork ; and 
that seemed to be a wise use of the governing 
force to the best legislators of that time. What 

1 George Cornewall Lewis, Use and Abuse of Political 
Terms, p. 200. 



IMMORAL LAW-MAKING. 185 

civilized man would think of prohibiting pork 
to-day? Yet government is stronger to-day 
than it was under a theocracy. It has grown 
stronger by relegating certain matters to the 
individual, living, as we have described aboA^e, 
in an atmosphere of law, so that he needs no 
statutes in those affairs. His food and drink, 
clothing and expenditure, are now left to him 
who is a law unto himself; yet all these mat- 
ters were once an anxious concern to the legis- 
lator. Suppose our abstinence friends, or any 
other party, should enact a statute that no per- 
son should eat over eleven ounces of meat per 
diem. In itself, it would probably be a good 
regulation. It would do some harm, but would 
injure fewer people than it would benefit in this 
American world, if it were carried out by every 
individual. Such a statute would at once show 
the limits which civilization has imposed upon 
itself, for it could not be carried into effect. 
Voracious eaters would be hurt by the tyranny, 
and lesser ones, by dreading it, would feel the 
same sense of oppression. A father of a family 



186 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

would not undertake this method of controllinsr 
eating ; and no state has ever possessed power 
equal to the paternal for controlling individual 
action, v^here the acts are numerous and fre- 
quent. Such matters in a higher civilization 
have passed out of statute law into that higher 
moral region which is a consequence and con- 
comitant of law, but is the proper home of the 
individual. 

Theocratic legislators overlook this principle, 
or are ignorant of it. We sa}^ Burke would 
say, a law ill-advised and badly executed is 
worse than the crime or injuries it would re- 
strain. They say, " No. God's laws stand in 
statute, though they are constantly broken ; it 
is our duty to maintain the liquor statute, bro- 
ken or not." 1 

The difference is readily comprehended by any 
one not blinded by his prejudices. Human laws 
are penal, and the offender escapes the penalty 
if the statute is badly adjusted. God's laws 
are vital, and carry their penalty not in a punish- 

1 Those arguments are actually used in Rhode Island. 



I 



IMMORAL LAW-MAKING. 18T 

ment, but in a consequence, wliicli no human 
being ever escaped in this world, whatever the 
world to come may yield. For these and other 
obvious reasons wise legislators have abandoned 
more and more of the theocratic grounds of law 
and based their legislation on right reason and 
experience. The present agitation to legislate 
God into the Constitution of the United States 
is an example. Common sense at once met this 
effort with the fact : He is there through the 
great fundamental ideas which are in our peo- 
ple ; if not there by means of these, you cannot 
put Him there by statute law. 

In running counter to these great truths, — 
bloody axioms the world has fought out, sweet 
axioms it has unfolded in the ways of peace, — 
our fanatical friends do a wrong they know not 
of. We have shown these liquor statutes to be 
badly grounded in law, — a tyranny possible 
only through the irresponsibility of the voting 
majority ; to be badly executed, actually defied, 
and maintained because they are so easily defied 
or evaded. Dr. Miner says : "If the Angel 



188 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

Gabriel should come down to earth and sell" 
liquors as beverages, he would not lift the busi- 
ness up to heaven, but the business would drag 
the angel down to hell." ^ The reason of this 
is plain, and is found in the principle Burke 
states. Tlie better the social system, the worse 
will be the effect of a bad law. A home may 
be briefly turned into a hell by a few bad princi- 
ples. 

It is no figure of speech that when j^ou make 
an impossible law and maintain it by fraud and 
tyranny, you make a hell on earth, and change 
an angel into a demon. We say fraud dehber- 
ately, for up to this point we have treated the 
prohibitionists as a whole, and with the respect 
their main motive entitles them to. But bad 
laws do not stop with the main motive ; they 
drag other influences in their train. One of 
the worst consequences of this legislation is the 
wretched puling hypocrisy which it directly 
creates and encourages. In our first chapter 
we described the process by which politicians 

1 Miner's Argument, p. 110. 



IMMORAL LAW-MAKING. 189 

are evolved out of the abstinence pressure when 
it is passing from the moral into the political 
sphere. We only dwelt on the necessary results 
of such laws in that view. There is another 
view which people who uphold these statutes 
must see sooner or later. There is a strong 
appetite for liquors diffused in society, not the 
drunkard's appetite, but that more potent, be- 
cause unseen, power which compels many re- 
spectable men to use liquors. Whether it be 
wise or unwise, good or bad, that appetite 
remains, and Avill not be abolished by a statute 
law. It prevails more among the classes wliich 
rule society and manage politics. Eelatively 
.we mean, and not in disparagement of those 
classes. Men of strong natures, natural leaders 
in small communities, abounding in animal 
spirits, are more likely to drink than the aver- 
age citizen, the average conference leader, or 
Sunday-school teacher. These men govern so- 
ciety so far as administration goes ; they always 
will govern it in some way or other, — whether 
temperance, know-nothingism, or anti-slavery 



190 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

prevails. These men, whether they be the 
Joneses we have described, or the men who 
make the legislators, the ward-meeting or cross- 
road Warwicks, are driven into a hypocritical 
obeisance to liquor legislation, which is false ; 
they are absolutely forced into a legal compli- 
ance and a public phylactery broadening, even 
if they do not conceal their personal habits, 
as they sometimes do. Add to this element of 
enforced pharisaism the nasty, foul, hybrid 
creatures who feign a virtue when they have 
it not, and drink secretly while in public they 
maintain temperance, prohibition, total absti- 
nence, and the semblance of any virtue their 
snivelling natures can contain, and we have a 
nice combination, not to say mixture, for the 
administration of law or " positive morality." 
Now, what sort of society is it into which 
these influences reach ? There are a few re- 
spectable and honorable dealers left in the 
business of retailing spirits. The number of 
such is small and daily growing less, while the 
sum of sellers grows larger. The majority of 



IMMORAL LAW-MAKING. 191 

these dealers are foreign-born, and bred np in 
the manner Dr. Miner describes, under the in- 
fluences the proliibitionists have created. Their 
field of operations is among aliens and Ameri- 
cans alike. The political education of many of 
our citizens to-day, youthful Americans " and 
the adult immigrants, is being carried forward 
in a society which knows no law but force, 
no wisdom but cunning. A man cannot buy 
under the law to-day in the city of Provi- 
dence a spoonful of liquor to drink, nor a jug of 
cooking wine. Yet it is notorious that men do buy 
about what they please, if they desire to drink, 
and are not of the very small class who regard a 
prohibitory law as binding. Government, law, 
social order itself, touch these heedless youth, 
and these old children coming from abroad, 
with no sufficient knowledge of the sublime 
spirit of law described above ; at this point 
where their passions and appetites crop out in 
their daily living. The political education of 
these foreigners, and of such Americans as fall 
under the same influences, is largely affected by 



192 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

the same causes. To them there is no har- 
monious system of laws working toward better 
morals in the community, but a struggle of force 
with natural appetite. Their ears are closed to 
reason, their consciences dulled to moral per- 
suasion, because they only see force — tyrannical 
force — bearing down a traffic which to them 
seems legitimate, — which is legitimate on one 
side of the law. As shown previously, the 
state makes the liquors property, people all 
around are actually drinking them, yet the 
officers of the law are at work in spasmodic 
efforts trying to destroy property which is con- 
demned by the moral sentiment of a* party in 
the state, while it has not lost its character and 
its rights under the common law of the land. 

What notions of property of social order and 
of right must a man receive, who for years is 
j)assing through such experience. If society 
steadily adhered to the prohibition principle, 
and faithfully worked it out, the result would 
be bad enough. For the reasons given in an 
early chapter, they have not been steady nor 



1 



IMMORAL LAW-MAKING. 193 

faithful, and never will be. Like causes pro- 
duce like effects. Until the habits of the people 
change, these laws must always be log-rolled"" 
through other political interests. They will 
be, as they have generally been, adroit political 
speculations, partially executed in spasms, then 
neglected when the temporary enthusiasm has 
cooled. 

One of the latest English writers thus dis- 
courses on the crimes legislation creates within 
the state. If he had written with the experi- 
ence of our liquor legislation before him, he 
could hardly have characterized it more ex- 
actly : -^ 

" The creation of artificial crimes, and the conse- 
quent reckless onslaught on public liberty, form the 
most perilous temptations to which a modern states- 
man is exposed. The ignorance and the unhappy 
perverseness of the bulk of the population is still so 
considerable in modern states, that they present no 
barrier ao-ainst the most enticinof and hazardous 
political experiments, while they offer the most 
ready though treacherous arguments for the stern 
necessity of having recourse to those experiments. 
9 M 



194 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

The inevitable result is general paralysis of moral 
responsibility ; executive tyranny in obscure places, 
and practised especially on classes of persons unable 
to attract public attention for their defence ; a servile 
habit of reliance on government for the instant 
remedy of every evil, — including those which are 
the direct consequences of voluntary vice or self- 
indulgence ; and the existence of a wide-spread net- 
work of police inspection and espionage^ sapping the 
essential vital force of a free, self-reliant, and self- 
respecting national life." ^ 

This corruption of legislation, this administer- 
ing of moral purposes in such manner that they 
develop immoral results, is a modern innovation. 
It is one of the final issues of party politics. 

Hear what De Tocqueville said about 1832 : — 

" Hitherto no one in the United States has dared 
to advance the maxim that every thing is permissi- 
ble for the interests of society, — an impious adage, 
which seems to have been invented in an age of 
freedom to shelter all future tyrants. Thus, while 
the law permits the Americans to do what they 
please, religion prevents them from conceiving, and 
forbids them to commit what is rash or unjust." 

1 Sheldon Amos, Systematic View of Jurisprudence, p. 514,, 



IMMORAL LAW-MAKING. 195 

We have changed all that bravely. Now we 
have whole religioas organizations pressing for- 
ward tyrannical laws, and devout apostles of 
finance, with politico-ecclesiastical machinery, 
forcing lobby-granted railway bonds on credu- 
lous people. 

We do not mean to mix inconsequent topics, 
but we must consider whither we drift, and that 
all these symptoms show diseases ; not neces- 
sarily one disease, but the different disorders 
are more or less related. Remember that the 
solvency of law is in the moral strength of the 
community, and at this moment we cannot afford 
to waste an atom of moral force in the mainte- 
nance of bad laws. The harm these worthy 
persons have done the State by pushing their 
good intentions beyond their legitimate sphere, 
is something which has not yet borne all its 
fruits, and which must be grappled with before 
it is too late. A great philosopher said men 
should possess a certain -'indifferency " before 
they could pursue ethical truth with any ad- 
vantage to themselves or their fellows. As we 



196 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW, 

understand moral science, a man, be he clergy- 
man, lawj^er, merchant, or day-laborer, will make 
a poor decision in a matter pertaining to public 
morals, unless his mind be open and free to re- 
ceive all possible knowledge from without his 
own special province. Few of us can grasp the 
details of law, social science, or theology ; but 
any intelligent person can acquire the general 
and leading principles which prevail in the 
knowledge of his time. Pie is then, if candid 
and earnest, in fit condition to hear and decide 
an ethical question, which, as between man and 
man, is the sum of knowledge or the province of 
wisdom. Any one of us should pursue his own 
personal interests, his likes and dislikes, his am- 
bitions and pleasures, with the ardent force of 
an honest advocate. This gives life and energy 
to society as a whole, everybody is alive, as we 
say. When these interests pass beyond himself 
and affect others directly, as when he votes, 
serves on a jury, administers an estate, acts 
on a committee, although he is the same man, 
other relations affect his moral state. The 



IMMORAL LAW-MAKING, 197 

legitimate passion of self sobers into tlie ethical 
opinion whicli reaches beyond himself and puts 
him into the attitude of a quick-eared but steady- 
minded judge, to carry out the figure with which 
we began. 

Instead of that, a certain class of persons, 
frequent in every community, as Locke says, 
"begin with espousing the ivell-endowed opin- 
ions in fashion ; and then seek arguments to 
show their beauty, or to varnish and disguise 
their deformity." 

This is the precise attitude which the temper- 
ance party has held toward other moral ques- 
tions for some thirty years. The writer has 
conversed with many sincere total abstinence 
men, who sadly admitted they had no hope in 
liquor laws, yet confessed that, whenever they 
differed with their associates, they were classed 
at once with free rum and the Sons of Belial. 
An end must come to this social despotism. 
Our quarrel with the prohibitionists goes far 
beyond the superficial statutes they enact. We 
arraign them at the bar of justice for the deceit 



198 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

and truckling cowardice they bring into social 
living, the disorder and confusion they drag 
into the ethics of law. We do not mean to 
overwhelm the reader with citations from Dr. 
Miner's argument; but he is a representative 
man, and the position and influence of ordinary 
and worthy prohibitionists can only be under- 
stood when their principles are v/orked out in 
full statement. 

"How shall we explain the fact that so many 
godly men, conscientious men, are in this error? 
. . , I solemnly aver before you that, if any man — 
any young man especially — steps into a Boston 
pulpit and is silent for six months on this question 
of the character of the liquor traffic, he will find 
himself surrounded by a class of wealthy men, who 
will invite him to their homes, seduce him by the 
wine-cup, and lay him under obligation in a thou- 
sand ways. Whenever he finds himself degraded to 
this humiliating condition, though he may remain in 
the pulpit, he has ceased to be a minister of God." ^ 

Who are these men, clergymen and others, 

he puts into the same category? The Eev. 

Doctors Adams, Leonard Bacon, Blagden, 

1 Miner's Argument, j), 76. 



IMMORAL LAW-MAKING. 199 

Hedge, Neale, Bishop Eastburn ; Governors 
Andrew, Clifford, and Washburn ; Agassiz : 
Doctors Bowditch, Charles T. Jackson, Holmes, 
H. J. Bigelow, Clarke ; citizens Norcross, Lin- 
coln, Duncan, and a hundred others. These men 
are among the topmost in their several vocations, 
and their professions cover nearly all the lines 
of our social life. They are the flower of New 
England, in so far as its blossoms can be gath- 
ered in one communit3^ The pivots on which 
your living, good reader, and my living turns ; 
the models to which we shall point our children, 
and ask them to imitate. For character far 
away affects us little ; it is the men of our own 
time who impress themselves on us and on those 
coming next after. These men, and others like 
them, make our manners, in the higher sense, 
in which these are the fruit of the man, and not 
merely an external form or temporary custom. 
Legislate, cultivate, theorize as you will, it is in 
the best men and women of the day humanity 
finds itself, and seeks to know and improve 
itself. Is it good law, good morals, good relig- 



'200 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

ion, which reviles these illustrious citizens and 
holds them up for execration, because their 
opinion in a matter of diet and social habit or 
political action differs from another respectable 
party of voters and moralists ? A petty spirit, 
narrowing daily, accelerating through our social 
mechanisms, impels the average unthinking mor- 
alist to enforce his social or political hobby on 
those unlike himself. Is this a process which 
will breed nobler and better men ? Are we so 
rich in heroes that we need no more Andrews 
or Agassizs in this western world ? 

This great theme — the essential dignity and 
moral worth of human law — cannot be reached 
in a paragraph, nor dismissed in a volume. 
That view of it we have attempted to set forth 
— its partial relation with moral reform and 
humane impulse — is far-reaching and widely 
extended. No one person can grasp the whole 
topic ; but we claim that we have established 
certain principles, both by the facts of experi- 
ence and by those dictate's of reason which con- 
trol the nature of law, and ultimately control 
governmental action. 



^ IMMORAL LAW-MAKING. 201 

If the narrow theory of abstinence ever he- 
comes the common basis of social life, the result 
must come through the agency of the individual 
acting on his fellows in ethical effort. Any 
civil pressure instituted to forward such result 
would not hasten but retard it. The individ- 
ual must have his freedom, even to injure him- 
self, and must not be restrained until his acts 
directly injure other persons. This gives the 
individual, while he has his senses, the right of 
drinking, and forbids the state from entirely 
cutting off the supply of liquors or from prohi- 
bition. In the second place, if temperance in 
drinking liquors continues to be, as it has been, 
the social habit of a large majority of the people, 
it must allow an equal freedom to the individ- 
ual. The individual cannot be cut off from his 
normal activity because social good may in an 
uncertain contingency be harmed. His normal 
act must be wrong, or directly harmful in its 
effects, before the law can justly interfere and 
stop him. If society passes beyond this limit 
and oppresses the individual, it transcends its 
9* 



202 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

own laws of being, for it was created to de- 
velop the individual. When it loses this per- 
ception and oppresses him, it finally loses its 
vital force and extinguishes itself: for there 
can be no society without individuals ; an indi- 
vidual might exist without society, but a society 
without individuals would be impossible. This 
principle is the foundation of justice, which, as 
Madison says, is the end and aim of all societies .j 
No part of any structure is comparable to its^ 
foundation ; we can change any part ; the 
groundwork sustains the whole, and cannot, 
in itseK be changed. All the benevolence of 
an angel could not alter these principles. An 
individual can save himself, his fellow can save 
him, if the benevolent impulse is wisely di- 
rected. An individual is in some respects 
greater than the state. But the nature of 
justice cannot be altered by benevolence. 
Justice can move all else, itself excepted. Dr. 
^ Winship could lift nine hundred pounds ; he 
could not lift his own feet. The basis is im- 
movable ; humanity must rest somewhere in its 



IMMORAL LAW-MAKING. 203 

physical action, and God has given us no surer 
ground than justice ; mercy may temper, it 
cannot change the nature of justice. 

The cause of the failure of the prohibitory 
statutes is not in their parts ; it is not because 
the quantity prohibited is too large or too small, 
the fines and imprisonment too lenient or too 
severe, the officers of state too slow or too quick, 
— it is in their whole, in the basis of the laws 
themselves. They are unjust. The law is a lie ; 
whenever it attempts to execute itself, it lies 
and deceives. To say that worthy citizens have 
made up their minds they will have such laws, 
does not change their nature. The American 
people had made up their mind in immense 
majority that they would maintain slavery about 
the year 1852. Did that change the nature of 
justice ? How long did slavery last ? 

Our prohibitory statute-makers, working on a 
benevolent motive, have debauched politicians, 
corrupted legislatures, and soiled the processes 
of courts, in the administration of these laws. 
This is disorder, and society should be in itself 



t 



204 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

the highest order. The broad and loyal Rich- 
ard Hooker says : — • 

" Wherefore that Ave may briefly end ; of law there 
can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is 
the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the 
world ; all things in heaven and earth do her hom- 
age, the very least as feehng her care, and the great- 
est as not exempted, from her power; both angels 
and men and creatures, of what condition soever, 
though each in different sort and manner, yet all 
with uniform consent, admiring her as the mother of 
their peace and joy." 

Appetite is one of the lowest and meanest of 
divine creations ; yet what creature exists with- 
out it, what action can accomplish itself which 
goes not hand and hand with it ? Life, the very 
emanation of divine being, is itself chained to it ; 
a royal master ever depending on this perpetual 
slave. It is the intention and aim of man to 
live, but the motive impulse to that living is in 
the spring of the appetite. Physical destruction 
of appetite is physical death. 

In the moral world, the state can regulate and 
care for appetite ; it cannot kill that meanest 



IMMORAL LAIY-MAKING. 205 

creature of God. When the harmony of law is 
broken, when power attempts this ethical mur- 
der, the little creature outdoes mighty states, 
for it rests itself on that pure justice which is 
in the being of God ! 



APPENDIX. 



THERE is no complete and harmonious state- 
ment of the relation of alcohol to the animal 
economy to be found. The people have an old 
and common saying that " wine is the milk of old 
age." They do not say that it is cow's milk, nor 
that old age needs a poison to nourish it. On the 
other hand, the universal word " intoxicated " means 
poisoned ; and it is almost certain that when a man 
is overdosed with liquor he is as if he were poisoned. 
These two conclusions of the common mind — first, 
that it is almost a food, and second, that it becomes 
in excess as dangerous as a poison — are very near 
to the scientific conclusions which we must draw 
from the excerpts which follow, and which are 
drawn from the most weighty authorities. 

The following propositions represent fairly, as we 
believe, the present state of physiological knowledge 
on this subject : — 

I. Alcohol is a substance which is used in the 
animal economy, and not wholly eliminated. The 
conditions of this use, or its exact mode of working 
in the body, are in doubt. 



208 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

II. The question whether it acts as a positive food 
or a stimulant is in doubt. Late investigators lean 
more and more toward the food theory. 

III. Most authorities agree that in moderate doses 
it diminishes bodily waste, like tea and coffee. Some, 
however (including among these advocates of the 
food theory), hold that tea and coffee do not dimin- 
ish waste, and they put alcohol into the same class. 

We are permitted to cite from studies made by 
Mr. Amasa M. Eaton : — 

" In one sense, alcohol, that is, pure alcohol, is a 
poison ; but the confusion here consists in having 
two meanings in mind, and in passing unconsciously 
from one to the other, supposing both to be alike. 
Dr. Percy ('An Experimental Enquiry concerning 
the Presence of Alcohol in the Ventricles of the 
Brain,' &c., London, 1839) injected from two to four 
ounces of strong alcohol into the stomachs of dogs. 
Death followed, as well it might, the alcohol he used 
containing about eighty per cent of absolute alco- 
hol. The strongest brandy and whiskey contain but 
fifty-four per cent of alcohol. The same quantity 
of solutions of this strength of tobacco, tea, coffee — 
perhaps even of salt — v^ould produce the same re- 
sult; but as this is not the form or manner in which 
alcohol is ever administered, no reasoning can be 
drawn from such results. That pure alcohol (like 
many other substances, if taken pure, but which 
never are so taken) is a poison, is a statement there 
is no use in proving or adducing as evidence, for 
none will deny it. 



APPENDIX. 209 

" Lallemand, Perrin, and Duroy ('Du Role de 
I'Alcohol et des Anesthetiques dans I'Organisme,' 
Paris, 1860) are advocates of total elimination, in 
which view they are supported by many others, but 
not by the latest experimenters. To the same effect 
is Dr. Victor Subbotin, in the ' Zeitschrift fiir Bio- 
logie,' Heft lY. On the other hand, Dr. Anstie 
(' Stimulants and Narcotics,' and in various articles 
in the Medical Journals), after experiments made in 
consequence of Lallemand, Perrin, and Duroy's re- 
sults, came to the conclusion that the original com- 
mon opinion was right, and that only a small portion 
of any alcohol taken is eliminated unaltered. These 
results have been confirmed by Dupre (' On the 
Elimination of Alcohol,' read before the Royal So- 
ciety, of which an abstract may be found in ' The 
Practitioner ' for March, 1872). 

" ' First. The amount of alcohol eliminated per 
day does not increase with the continuance of the 
alcohol diet; therefore all the alcohol consumed 
daily must, of necessity, be disposed of daily ; and 
as it certainly is not eliminated within that time, it 
must be destroyed in the system. 

" ' Second. The elimination of alcohol following 
the taking of a dose or doses of alcohol is completed 
twenty-four houi-s after the last dose of alcohol has 
been taken. 

"'Third. The amount of alcohol eliminated in 
both breath and urine is a minute fraction only of 
the amount of alcohol taken.' 

" Still more to the point are the experiments and 

N 



210 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

results of Dr. Hammond (' Effects of Alcohol on the 
Nervous System — Inaugural Address as President 
of the Neurological Society of New York,' published 
in 'The Psychological and Medico-Legal Journal' 
for July, 1874), He performed three series of exper- 
iments on himself, taking alcohol, first, when the 
food taken was just sufficient for the w^ants of the 
organism; second, when it was not sufficient; and 
third, when it was more than sufficient. Of course 
I have not space here to give any sufficient explana- 
tion of these and other experiments made, as quoted 
above. For all details I must refer the curious reader 
to the memoirs cited. Dr. Hammond says, in sum- 
ming up: ' After such results, are we not justified in 
regarding alcohol as food ? If it is not food, what 
is it ? We have seen that it takes the place of food, 
and that the weight of the body increases under its 
use. Any substance which produces the effects 
w^hich we have seen to attend on the use of alcohol 
is essentially food, even although it is not demon- 
strable at present that it undergoes conversion into 
tissue. If alcohol is not entitled to this rank, many 
substances which are now universally placed in the 
category of aliments must be degraded from their 
positions.' 

. " ' Alcohol retards the destruction of the tissues. 
By this destruction force is generated, muscles con- 
tract, thoughts are developed, organs secrete and 
excrete. Food supplies the material for new tissue. 
Now, as alcohol stops the full tide of this decay, it 
is very evident that it must furnish the force which 



APPENDIX. 211 

is developed under its use. How it does this is not 
clear. But it is not clear how a piece of iron deflects 
a magnetic needle when held on the opposite side 
of a stone wall or a feather bed. Both circum- 
stances are ultimate facts, which, for the present at 
least, must satisfy us. That alcohol enters the blood 
and permeates all the tissues, is satisfactorily proven. 
Lallemand, Perrin, and Duroy contend that it is 
excreted from the system unaltered. If this were 
true of all the alcohol ingested, its action would be 
limited to its effects upon the nervous system, pro- 
duced by actual contact with the nervous tissues ; 
but there is no more reason to suppose that all the 
alcohol taken into the system is thus excreted un- 
altered from the body, than there is for suj^posing 
that all the carbon taken as food is excreted from 
the skin and lungs as carbonic acid. It is not at 
all improbable that alcohol itself furnishes the force 
directly, by entering into combination with the first 
products of tissue decay, whereby they are again 
assimilated, without being excreted as urea, uric 
acid, &c. Many of these bodies are highly nitro- 
genous, and under certain circumstances might yield 
their nitrogen to new tissues. Upon this hypothesis, 
and upon this alone, so far as I can perceive, can be 
reconciled the facts that an increase of force and a 
diminution of the products of the decay of tissue 
attend upon the ingestion of alcohol.' . . . 

" ' It would be only fair to ask me what consti- 
tutes excess? and if you did, I should answer that, 
in the abstract, I do not know, any more than I 



212 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

know how mucli tea or coffee any one of you can 
drink with comfort or advantage ; how many cigars 
you can smoke without passing from good to bad 
effects ; how much mustard on your beef agrees with 
you, or how much disagrees; or how much butter 
you can eat on your buckwheat cakes. In fact, I 
do not know that you can use any of these things 
without injury ; for to some j^ersons tea and coffee 
and tobacco and mustard and butter are poisonous. 
Every person must, to a great extent, be a law unto 
himself in the matter of his food ; no one can a 
'priori tell him what and how much are good for 
him. A single glass of wine may be excess for some 
individuals, while to others it fills a role which noth- 
ing else can fill. That alcohol even in large quanti- 
ties is beneficial to some persons is a point in regard 
to which I have no doubt ; but these persons are 
not in a normal condition, and when they are re- 
stored to health their potations should cease.' 

"Dr. Curtis, of New York, says: 'In ordinary 
amounts alcohol is wholly consumed, transformed in 
the system, and, by the nature of its chemical com- 
position, is capable, like certain elements of ordinary 
food, of thus yielding force which can be used by 
the economy to do life-work, <fcc. And thus, within 
certain limits of dose, alcohol is transformed like 
ordinary food in the system without producing any 
injurious effects, and, yielding useful force for the 
purposes of the economy, must be considered as a 
food in any philosophical sense of the word.' I 
wish to call particular attention to what he further 



APPENDIX. 213 

says : * It is an important point to know, and one 
little nnderstoorl, that this food-action is attended 
with no exciting or intoxicating influence ; but the 
whole effect, like that of ordinary food, is seen in the 
maintenance or restoration, according to cii'cum- 
stances, of that balance of function called health. 
But if taken in greater quantity than can be utilized 
as a force-yielding food, the excess of alcohol acts as 
a poison, producing a well-known train of perturba- 
tions of function. All signs of departure from the 
natural condition in the drinker, from the first flush- 
ing of the cheek, brightening of the eye, and un- 
natural mental excitement, to the general paralysis 
of complete drunkenness, belong equally to the poi- 
sonous effect of alcohol. Even the early phases of 
alcoholic disturbance, which are often improperly 
called " stimulating," are part and parcel of the 
injuriously disturbing influence of overdosage, and 
must be put in the same category with the more 
obviously poisonous effects of pronounced intoxi- 
cation. Alcohol has thus a twofold action. First, 
it is capable, in proper doses, of being consumed 
and utilized as a force-producer ; in wliich case 
there is no visible disturbance of normal function. 
Such action cannot be distinguished, either by the 
drinker or the physiologist, from that of a quickly 
digestible fluid food, and is no more an " excitement" 
or " stimulation," followed by a " recoil " or " depres- 
sion," than is the action of a bowl of hot soup or a 
glass of milk. The second action is the poisonous 
influence of an excess of alcohol circulatinir in the 



214 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

blood, which makes itself sensible to the drinker by- 
peculiar sensations and disturbances, and is not only- 
followed by " depression," but is itself a form of de- 
pression, — that is, a disturbance of balance; an 
unnatural perturbation of the normal working of 
the functions.' 

" Abstinents are very fond of quoting the fact that 
alcohol may be found in the brain of a person who 
has died from excessive drinking ; bat, as Dr. Ham- 
mond pertinently says : ' The amount of essential oil 
present in onions is far less in proportion than the 
quantity of alcohol contained in the mildest wines ; 
and yet we cannot eat an onion without this oil 
passing into the blood, and impregnating the air 
expired in respiration with its peculiar odor. Doubt- 
less the brain of a person who has dined heartily on 
onions would exhale the characteristic odor of the 
vegetable.' 

" Chronic alcoholic intoxication would rarely, if 
ever, ensue from the moderate use of pure light 
wines or malt liquors. But it is impossible to get 
pure wine. It is not generally known that all the 
foreign wines sold in this country are made stronger 
by the addition of alcohol, before or after importa- 
tion, to suit the strong taste of the American market. 
Some of the choicest wines, when pure, do not con- 
tain more than six to ten per cent of alcohol, — no 
more than good cider, — and no wine can, by fer- 
mentation only, be made to contain more than 
seventeen per cent of alcohol. All over this is 
added, even if there be no other adulteration. And 



APPENDIX, 215 

the amount and quality of this adulteration is fear- 
ful. For details I must refer to the standard Toxi- 
cologys, such as Christison, Wethevbee, and others, 
and Hassall and others on the 'Adulterations of 
Food,' and to a summary in ' Alcohol, its Combi- 
nations, Adulterations, and Physical Effects,' by Col. 
Dudley, just published. 

" If the so-called temperance party, instead of 
vainly attempting to prohibit the sale of liquors, 
regardless of what may be consumed outside of 
retail stores, would help to educate the people as to 
the adulterations now used in all wines, and would 
supply them with pure wine of the natural strength, 
with no alcohol added, they would accomplish more 
than they have yet accomplished in aiding the sup- 
pression of intemperance ; for the instinct to drink 
something stimulant exists, and will exist, and might 
as well be recognized. It is useless to ignore it or 
to attempt to destroy it. It exists in every people 
the world over." 

The very delicate question whether alcohol is a 
food or a stimulant receives some light from tlie 
following statement of Dr. Bowditch. Professor 
Voit's authority in these matters is second to none : — 

"ALCOHOL AS A NUTRITIVE AGENT. 

" By H. P. Bowditch, M.D., Boston. Eead before the Boston 
Society of Medical Sciences. 

" The experiments of Dr. Subbotin ^ were per- 
formed on rabbits enclosed in an apparatus, by 

1 On the physiological importance of alcohol for the animal 
organism. Zeitschrift f iir Biologic, vii. 361. 



216 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW.' 

means of which the exhalations of the skin and 
lungs could be examined for alcohol. The urine 
was also collected and examined for the same sub- 
stance. 

"The experiments showed that, in the first five 
hours after the introduction of 3.45 grammes of 
alcohol into the stomach of a rabbit, about 2 per 
cent was eliminated by the kidneys, and 5 per cent 
by the lungs and skin. 

"Experiments extending over a greater length of 
time led to the conclusion that, usually, during 
twenty-four hours, at least 16 per cent of the in- 
jected alcohol leaves the body in an unchanged con- 
dition (or perhaps as aldehyde), and that besides 
this elimination by lungs, skin, and kidney, a portion 
of the alcohol is oxidized in the organism. Although 
by this oxidation force must be set free in the organ- 
ism, the author does not consider that alcohol is on 
that account to be regarded as a nutriment, for the 
functions of the animal body depend for their per- 
formance, according to Dr. S., upon the transforma- 
tion of living material, le., of the constituent parts 
of the body, and not upon the decomposition of 
matter foreign to the body. 

"In a note appended to Dr. Subbotin's essay, 
Professor Yoit expresses himself as follows: 'I do 
not agree entirely with Dr. Subbotin in his views 
on the importance of alcohol as a nutriment. I de- 
fine a nutriment as a substance which is capable of 
furnishing to the body any of its necessary constitu- 
ents, or of preventing the removal of such con- 



APPENDIX. 217 

stituents from the body. To the first class belong 
such substances as albumen (since it can be depos- 
ited as such in the body), or fat or water or the min- 
eral constituents of the body; to the second class 
belong such substances as starch, which hinders the 
loss of fat from the body. If a nutriment is defined 
as a substance which, by decomposition, furnishes 
living force to the body, the definition would not be 
exhaustive, for it would exclude water and the min- 
eral constituents of the body. Alcohol must, there- 
fore, to a certain extent, be regarded as a nutriment, 
since, under its influence, fewer substances are de- 
composed in the body. It plays, in this respect, a 
similar (though quantitatively very different) part 
to that of starch, which also protects fat from decom- 
position, and, when taken in excess, causes deposi- 
tion of fat in the organs or fatty degeneration. If a 
part of the alcohol is decomposed in the body into 
lower forms of chemical combination, it r)%ust give 
rise to living force, which either benefits the body 
in the form of heat, or may, perhaps, be used for the 
performance of mechanical work; the same is true 
of acetic acid, which is also not to be considered as 
an ultimate excretory product, and from which, 
therefore, in decomposition, potential force passes 
into living force. 

" ' It is another question, however, when we ask 
what importance alcohol has for us as a nutriment, 
and whether we take it in order to save fiat from 
decomposition and furnish us with living force, — 
in other words, to introduce a nutriment into the 
10 



218 PROI^IBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

body. Since alcohol, when taken in considerable 
amount, causes disturbances in the processes of the 
animal economy, we cannot introduce it in quanti- 
ties sufficient for nourishment as we do other nu- 
triments, and in the amount which we can take 
without injury its importance as a nutriment is too 
small to be considered. In this point, then, I agree 
entirely with Dr. Subbotin ; we use alcohol not on 
account of its importance as a nutriment, but on 
account of its effects as a stimulant or relish.* 

" Professor Voit's definition of a nutriment is rather 
more comprehensive than those usually given ; but 
it has the merit of great exactness, and of leaving 
no doubt as to its applicability to any given sub- 
stance. Whether this definition or any other be 
adopted, it is, of course, essential, as a preliminary 
to the discussion of the nutritive value of alcohol or 
any other substance, that we should define as exactly 
as possible what we understand by the terms 'nu- 
triment' and 'nutrition.' 

"Although, as Professor Yoit says, alcohol can- 
not, under normal circumstances, be introduced into 
the body in sufficient amount to be of any import- 
ance as a nutriment without producing toxic effects, 
may it not be that in those morbid conditions of the 
system where large amounts of alcohol are borne 
without causing narcotism, the nutritive properties 
of the substance really become important, and that 
patients who are supported by alcohol through peri- 
ods of great weakness or exhaustion are really nour- 
ished and not simply stimulated by it ? " 



APPENDIX. 219 

We believe there is now no difference worth 
noticing from the opinion that, in proper doses, it 
is a usefuil agent. We cite Dr. Woodman, in the 
"London Medical Record," May 13, 1874 : — 

"Riegel on the Influence of Alcohol on Temper- 
ature of the Human Body : from Deutsclies Archiv fiir 
Klinische Medicin. Riegel concludes that although 
alcohol scarcely deseiwes the reputation given to it 
in England, as a decided depressor of temperature, 
yet, on the other hand, it never essentially raises the 
temperature, — the constant dreaid of continental 
practitioners, — and it is decidedly one of those things 
which diminish bodily waste, like tea and coffee. 
On the whole, his experiments confirm those of Binz 
and Bouvier (we may add, of Dr. Parkes, Dogiel, 
Sydney Ringer — and the Reporter)." 

Dr. Binz, of Bonn, as cited in " The American 
Journal of the Medical Sciences," January, 18T4, 
p. 231, "said his experiments showed a threefold 
action, — the diminution of the heat of the body, 
reduction of the putrid processes, andraising of the 
action of the heart. Alcohol was more than a simple 
stimulant ; it was a strong antipyretic, and an equally 
powerful antiseptic. It was a priori to be expected 
that alcohol would not be without its influence on 
the metamorphosis of tissues. An agent that, con- 
sumed in large doses, clearly lowered the combus- 
tion, must also be supposed to decrease the urea and 
the carbonic acid ; and this was in reality the case." 

Another opinion of alcoliol is, that it is " an unstable 
combination of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, which. 



220 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

when undergoing decomposition, is capable of setting 
free a large amount of force {e.g.^ when burning in 
a spirit-lamp). If this decomposition takes place in 
the body, as it doubtless does to a considerable 
extent, the force set free must take the form of heat 
or muscular work. In other words, alcohol must 
contribute to the maintenance of the animal economy 
in the same way that food does. The nutritive 
power of alcohol is, however, in nonnal conditions of 
the body, very slight, for the reason pointed out by 
Prof. Voit. But when we see a patient suffering from an 
exhausting disease, actually living weeks and months 
on little else than a daily bottle of wine, we are 
forced to the conclusion that the toxic influence of 
alcohol in the nervous system is for some reason held 
in abeyance, so that the nutritive power becomes of 
importance, and that the patient is really /ecZ, and not 
merely stimulated^ by wine." 

Dr. Anstie, in the " Practitioner," July, 1874 : " It is 
scarcely possible, therefore, but that the solution of 
the questions as to the action of alcohol in the body 
will also bring about the discovery of new physio- 
logical facts of great interest and importance : — 

" 1. If alcohol be a force-producing food, as seems 
by far the most likely, it is 2)robably of great value 
in that capacity, on account of the rapidity with 
which its transformations take place. It is, however, 
abundantly certain, that beyond a certain dosage 
(which is pretty clearly made out for the average, 
though of course there are individual exceptions in 
both directions) it becomes a narcotic poison of a 



APPENDIX. 221 

very dangerous character in every respect, not the 
least disadvantage being that it cannot be eliminated 
to any considerable extent. 

" 2. If alcohol does not disappear by oxidation, it 
must undergo some as yet quite unknown trans- 
formation, after which it must escape unrecognized 
in the excretions. I have heard various attempts to 
suggest such modes of disappearance, but nothing, 
so far, which wears any air of probability. 

" 3. If alcohol, however, be indeed oxidized, and yet 
does not beget force which can be used in the organ- 
ism, this would be the strangest possible discovery. 
Considering the very high theoretical force-value of 
the 600 to 800 grains of absolute alcohol which mil- 
lions of sober persons are taking every day, we may 
well be hopeless of any reasonable answer to the 
question, Why does not this large development of 
wholly useless force within the body produce some 
violent symptoms of disturbance ? " 

The effects produced on the brain by alcohol are 
much exaggerated in the estimation of the iDublic. 
" P. Ruge^ on the effect of alcohol upon the animal 
organism, quoted from Virchow's Archiv, JlLIJC.^ in 
Rosenthal's ' Centralblat,' 1870. The author desired 
to investigate the anatomical changes of animal 
organs produced by alcoholism, and experimented on 
twenty-two grown dogs and five rabbits. They finally 
got as much as 100 ccm. of 90 per cent alcohol daily, 
and that for months. Upon comparing his results 
with the Charite Hospital reports of Berlin for 1867 
and 1868, he did not find any different results as to the 



222 PROHIBITORY LIQUOR LAW. 

effect of alcohol upon the human brain. Of ten per- 
sons who died of delirium tremens, but one showed 
a decided hemorrhagic pachymeningitis, one an 
increase of the dura, and in the rest the texture of 
the brain was normal. On the other hand, forty- 
seven cases of pachymeningitis were caused without 
any abuse of spirits. The five rabbits did not show 
any material change of any organ. Former obser- 
vations of alcoholic influence upon the animal tem- 
perature were corroborated. The temperature of 
dogs, especially when they were intoxicated, sank by 
several degrees ; their pulse and respiration increased 
at the same time." 

" Pavey on Food and Dietetics " — the latest au- 
thority in these matters — says: "It Avill be seen 
that much divergence of opinion has prevailed upon 
the prime question, whether alcohol is to be regarded 
as possessing any alimentary value or not. It will 
suffice here to refer the reader to what has been 
already mentioned, and to state that the weight of 
evidence appears to be in favor of the affirmative. 
A small portion seems, undoubtedly, to escape from 
the body unconsumed ; but there is reason to believe 
that the larger portion is retained and turned to 
account in the system." p. 357. 

" Beer is a refreshing, exhilarating, nutritive, and, 
when taken in excess, an intoxicating beverage." 
p. 365. 

" Although chemistry displays the existence of a 
number of constituents in wine, yet it may be con- 
sidered that in its action upon the system we have 



APPENDIX. ZZ6 

not to deal with the effect of its independent prin- 
ciples, but with a liquid in which the ingredients 
should be so amalgamated, incorporated, or blended 
toirether as to make a homosfeneous whole. For 
instance, if we look to alcohol, which forms the most 
active component, the effects of a certain amount of 
this principle, as it is contained in wine, are not 
identical with those of the same amount diluted to 
an equal extent with water. The alcohol appears 
to become blended with the other ingredients, and, 
in this state, to exert a somewhat modified action 
upon the system." p. 376. 

We may add that Dr. Pavey does not say whether 
it is wise or unwise to take alcoholic drinks. He 
leaves the matter to each individual. We hold that 
legislators should be equally discreet. 



Cambridge : Press of Jolin Wilson & Son. 



Messrs, Roberts Brothers' Publications, 

LAOCOON. An Essay upon the Limits of Painting 
and Poetry. With remarks illustrative of various points 
in the History of Ancient Art. By Gotthold Ephraim 
Lessing. Translated by Ellen Frothingham. i6mo. 
Price $1.50. 

In reference to this work, we can give our readers no better proof of its merit 
than by quoting the words of an English critic uttered many years ago : " The 
author or the ' Laocoon' was perhaps the greatest critic of modem times. The 
object of this celebrated work is to show that the isolation of the several fine arts 
from each other is essential to their perfection, and that their common aim is the 
production of beauty. The peculiar province of poetry is proved to be entirely dis- 
tinct both from that of morality and of philosophy ; being limited, strictly speaking, 
to the exhibition of ideal actions. These views, in which Lessing differed widely 
from Klopstock, who made moral beauty, and also from Wieland, who considered 
nature and truth, as the great aim of poetry, but in which he agreed with Aristotle, 
and was closely followed in their a^sthetical theories by Goethe, Schiller, and Hum- 
boldt, were enforced with great argumentative power, extraordinary purity and 
correctness of taste, and with rich and pertinent illustrations from the art and 
literature of Greece." 

From the Bostoji Tra7iscript. 

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differs so widely. It is also a feature of great value toward the general usefulness 
of the book that she has appended translations of the many passages from Latin 
and Greek authors through which Lessing illustrates his argument. 

The growing interest in our country in questions of art and criticism ought to 
secure for this work a wide class of readers. No tiioughtfid person ever forgets 
the outburst of enthusiasm its first reading awakened in him. Even Goethe said 
of it that in the confused period of his own youth it cleared up the whole heavens 
to him and made his path plain before him. As an offset to such books as those 
of Ruskin, marvellously rich and suggestive, but full of subjective caprice and dog- 
matism, it teaches invaluable lessons of method. Lessing was a legislator in the 
domain of criticism. His insight was so nearly uneiTing, and his knowledge so 
vast and accurate, that his verdicts stand like those of a Mansfield or Marshall in 
tlie courts of law. 

. . . The book must be read and re-read. It created an epoch in art criticism 
when it first appeared, and its lessons are as fresh and weighty to-day as ever. On 
every page great principles are developed which help one to an ever deeper appre- 
ciation 01 the works of the great masters in art and literature. 



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Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications, 

ENGLISH LESSONS FOR ENGLISH PEOPLE. 

By Rev. E. A. Abbott, M.A., and Prof. J. R. Seeley, 
M.A. Parti. — Vocabulary. Part H. — Diction. Part 
III. — Metre. Part IV. — Hints on Selection and Ar- 
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FromtheLondo7iAthenceuin. 
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use by a large circle of readers ; and though designed principally for boys, may be 
read with advantage by many of more advanced years. Ore of the lessons which 
it professes to teach, " to use the right word in the right place," is one which no 
one should despise. The accomplishment is a rare one, and many of the hints 
here given are truly admirable. 

From tJte Southern Review. 

The study of Language can never be exhausted. Every time it is looked at by 
a man of real ability and culture, some new phase starts into view. The origin 
of Language ; its relations to the mind ; its historj'' ; its laws ; its development ; 
its struggles ; its triumphs ; its devices ; its puzzles ; its ethics, — every thing 
about it is full of interest- 

Here is a delightful book, by two men of recognized authority, — the head 
Master of London School, and the Professor of Modem History in the University 
of Cambridge, the notable author of " Ecce Homo." The book is so compre- 
hensive in its scope that it seems almost miscellaneous. It treats of the vocabulary 
of the English Language ; Diction as appropriate to this or that sort of compo- 
sition ; selection and arguments of topics ; ISIetre, and an Appendix on Logic. 
All this in less than three hundred pages. "Within this space so many subjects 
cannot be treated exhaustively ; and no one is, unless we may except Metre, to 
which about eighty pages are devoted, and about which all seems to be said that 
is worth saying, — possibly more. But on each topic some of the best tilings are 
said in a very stimulating way. The student will desire to study more thoroughly 
the subject into which such pleasant openings are here given ; and the best pre- 
pared teacher will be thankful for the nvunber of striking illustrations gathered up 
to his hand. 

Tlie abundance and freshness of the quotations m.akes the volume very attrac- 
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14 ROBERTS BROTHERS' PUBLICATIONS. 



THE 

INTELLECTUAL LIFE. 

By PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON, 

AUTHOR OP 

"A Painter's Camp," "Thoughts About Art," "The Un- 
known River," *' Chapters on Animals." 

Square l2mo, cloth, gilt. Price $2.00. 

Front the Christian Union. 

" In many respects this is a remarkable book, — the last and best production 
of a singularl}' weii balanced and finely cultured mind. No man whose life was 
not lifted above the anxieties of a bread-winning life could have written this work ; 
which is steeped in that sweetness and light, the virtues of which Mr. Arnold so 
eloquently preaches- Compared with Air. Hamerton's former writings, ' Th-; 

Intellectual Life' is incomparably his best production But above all, 

and specially as critics, are we charmed with the large impartiality of the writer. 
Mr Hamerton is one of those peculiarly fonunate men who feve the inclination 
and means to \w& an idea! life- From his youth he ha? lived in an atmosi:)here 
of culture and light, moving with clipped wings in a charmed circle of thought. 
Possessing a peculiarly refined and delicate nature, a passionate love of beauty, 
and purity and art ; and ha\'ing the means to gratify his tastes, Mr. Hamenon 
has held himself aloof from the commonplace routine of life ; and by constant 
study of books and nature and his fe'.low men, has so purified his intellect and 
tempered his judgment, that he is able to view things from a higher platform even 
than more able men whose natures have been soured, cramped, or influenced by 
the necessities of a laborious existence. Hence the rare impartiality of his deci- 
sions, the catholicity of his views, and the sympathy with which he can discusa 
the most irreconcilable doctrines. To read Mr. Hamerton's writings is an intel- 
lectual luxury. They are not boisterously strong, or excitir.g, or even very forci- 
ble ; but they are instinct with the finest feeling, the broadest sympathies, and a 
philosophic calm that acts like an opiate on the unstrung nerves of the hard- 
wrought literar>' reader. Calm, equable, and beautiful, 'The Intellectual Life,' 
when contrasted with the sensational and half digested clap-trap that forms so 
large a portion of contemporary' literature, reminds one of the old picture of the 
nuns, moving about, calm and seif-possessed. through the fighting and blasphem- 
ing crowds th;%t thronged the beleagured city-'' 

"This book is written with perfect singleness of purpose to help other* 
towards an intellectual life," says the Boston Daily Advertiser. 

" It is eminently a book of counsel and instruction," says the Bostoti Post. 

" A book, which it seems to us will take a permanent place iu literature, 
says the New York Daily Mail. 

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GOETHE'S 

Hermann and Dorothea. 

TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN 

By ELLEN FROTHINGHAM. 



WITH ILLUSTRATIONS. 

Thin Svo, clotJi^ gilt, bevelled boards. Price $2.00. 
A cheaper editio7ij i6mo, cloth. Price %\. 00. 

"Miss Frothingham's translation is something to be glad of: it lends itself 
kindly to perusal, and it presents Goethe's charming poem in the metre of the 
original. ... It is not a poem which could be profitably used in an argument for 
the enlargement of the sphere of woman : it teaches her subjection, indeed, from 
the lips of a beautiful girl, which are always so fatally convincing ; but it has its 
charm, neveriheless, and will serve at least for an agreeable picture of an age when 
the ideal woman was a creature around which grew the beauty and comfort and 
security of home." — Atlantic Monthly. 

"The poem itself is bewitching. Of the same metre as Longfellow's ' Evan- 
geline,' its sweet aiTd measured cadences carry the reader onward with a real pleas- 
ure as he becomes more and more absorbed in this descriptive wooing song. It is 
a sweet volume to read aloud in a select circle of intelligent friends." — Providence 
Press. 

" Miss Frothingham has done a good service, and done it well, in translating 
this famous idyl, which has been justly called * one of the most faultless poems of 
modern times.' Nothing can surpass the simplicity, tenderness, and grace of the 
original, and these have been well preserved in Miss Frothingham's version. Her 
success is worthy of the highest praise, and the mere English reader can .scarcely 
fail to read the poem with the same delight with which it has always been read bj 
those familiar with the German. Its charming pictures of domestic life, the 
strength and delicacy of its characterization, the purity of tone and ardent love of 
country wl.ich breathe through it, must always make it one of the most admired 
el Goethe's works.'^ — Bosioft Christian Register. 



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